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NATURE'S  INVITATION 


NATURE'S  INVITATION 

NOTES  OF  A  BIRD-GAZER 
NORTH  AND  SOUTH 


BY 


BKADFOKD  TOKKEY 


"On  Nature's  invitation  do  I  come."—  WOBDSWOBTH. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

re?0,  CambritJ0e 
1904 


COPYRIGHT    1904  BY  BRADFORD  TORREY 
ALL   RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  October  1004 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

OF  the  chapters  here  brought  together  the  two 
longest,  the  first  and  the  last,  are  reprinted  from 
the  "  Atlantic  Monthly."  The  others  were  origi- 
nally contributed,  by  way  of  weekly  letters,  to 
three  newspapers,  —  the  "  Evening  Transcript " 
of  Boston,  and  the  "  Mail  and  Express  "  and  the 
"  Evening  Post "  of  New  York. 


CONTENTS 


NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

PAQB 

A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE 3 

A  WEEK  ON  MOUNT  WASHINGTON   ....  32 

ABOVE  THE  BIRDS 41 

MOUNTAIN-TOP  AND  VALLEY 50 

IN  THE  MOUNT  LAFAYETTE  FOREST    ....  57 

ON  BALD  MOUNTAIN 65 

BIRDS  AND  BKIGHT  LEAVES 72 

FLORIDA 

FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  MIAMI 83 

A  FROSTY  MORNING 89 

BEWILDERMENT 96 

WAITING  FOR  THE  Music 104 

PERIPATETIC  BOTANY Ill 

A  PEEP  AT  THE  EVERGLADES 120 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SPRING 128 

FAIR  ORMOND 136 

A  DAY  IN  THE  WOODS 142 

PICTURE  AND  SONG 151 

TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

IN  OLD  SAN  ANTONIO        ......  161 

A  BIRD-GAZER'S  PUZZLES 171 

LUCK  ON  THE  PRAIRIE       .       .       .       .       .       .  179 


viii  CONTENTS 

OVER  THE  BOBBER 188 

FIRST  DAYS  IN  TUCSON 196 

MOBBED  IN  ARIZONA 205 

AN  IDLE  AFTERNOON 215 

SHY  LIFE  IN  THE  DESERT 224 

A  NEW  ACQUAINTANCE 233 

THE  DESERT  REJOICES 242 

NESTS  AND  OTHER  MATTERS     .        .        .        ,       .  251 

A  FLYCATCHER  AND  A  SPARROW         .       ;       .        .  259 

A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS      ,        .       «',-..        .  266 

INDEX                                                                             .  295 


NEW  HAMPSHIRE 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE 

WHEN  a  man  sets  forth  on  an  out-of-door  pleasure 
jaunt,  his  prayer  is  for  weather.  If  he  is  going 
to  the  mountains,  let  him  double  his  urgency. 
In  the  mountains,  if  nowhere  else,  weather  is 
three  fifths  of  life. 

My  first  trip  to  New  Hampshire  the  present 
season1  was  made  under  smooth,  high  clouds, 
which  left  the  distance  clear,  so  that  the  moun- 
tains stood  up  grandly  beyond  the  lake  as  we 
ran  along  its  western  border.  Not  a  drop  of 
rain  fell  till  I  stepped  off  the  car  at  Warren. 
At  that  moment  the  world  grew  suddenly  dark, 
and  before  I  could  get  into  the  open  carriage  the 
clouds  burst,  and  with  a  rattling  of  thunder  bolts 
a  deluge  of  rain  and  hail  descended  upon  us. 
There  was  no  contending  with  such  an  adversary, 
though  a  good  woman  across  the  way,  commiser- 
ating our  plight,  came  to  the  door  with  proffers  of 
an  umbrella.  I  retreated  to  the  station,  while  the 
driver  hastened  down  the  street  to  put  his  team 
under  shelter.  So  a  half  hour  passed.  Then  we 
tried  again,  and  half  frozen,  in  spite  of  a  winter 


4  :  NEW   HAMPSHIRE 

overcoat  and  everything  that  goes  with  it  (the 
date  was  May  17),  I  reached  my  destination,  five 
miles  away,  at  the  foot  of  Moosilauke. 

All  this  would  hardly  deserve  narration,  per- 
haps (the  story  of  travelers'  discomforts  being 
mostly  matter  for  skipping),  only  that  it  marked 
the  setting  in  of  a  cold,  rainy  "  spell "  that  hung 
upon  us  for  four  days.  Four  sunless  days  out  of 
seven  was  a  proportion  fairly  to  be  complained 
of.  The  more  I  consider  it,  the  truer  seems  the 
equation  just  now  stated,  that  mountain  weather 
is  three  fifths  of  life.  For  those  four  days  I  did 
not  even  see  Moosilauke,  though  we  were  living, 
so  to  speak,  upon  its  shoulder,  and  I  knew  by 
hearsay  that  the  summit  house  was  visible  from 
the  back  doorstep. 

My  first  brief  walk  before  supper  should  rea- 
sonably have  been  in  the  clearer  valley  country ; 
but  if  reason  spoke  inclination  did  not  hear  it, 
and  my  feet  —  which  seem  to  feel  that  they  are 
old  enough  by  this  time  to  know  their  master's 
business  for  him  —  took  of  their  own  motion  an 
opposite  course.  The  mountain  woods,  as  I  en- 
tered them,  had  the  appearance  of  early  March : 
only  the  merest  sprinkling  of  new  life,  —  clin- 
tonia  leaves  especially,  with  here  and  there  a 
round-leaved  violet,  both  leaves  and  flowers,  — 
upon  a  ground  still  all  defaced  by  the  hand  of 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE  5 

Winter.  Dead  leaves  make  an  agreeable  carpet, 
as  they  rustle  cheerfully-sadly  under  one's  feet  in 
autumn ;  but  there  was  no  rustle  here  ;  the  snow 
had  pressed  every  leaf  flat  and  left  it  sodden. 
One  thing  consoled  me :  I  had  not  arrived  too 
late.  The  "  bud-crowned  spring,"  for  all  my 
fears,  was  yet  to  "  go  forth." 

The  next  morning  it  was  not  enough  to  say  that 
it  was  cloudy.  That  impersonal  expression  would 
have  been  quite  below  the  mark.  We  were 
cloudy.  In  short,  the  cloud  was  literally  around 
us  and  upon  us.  As  I  stepped  out  of  doors,  a 
rose-breasted  grosbeak  was  singing  in  one  direc- 
tion, and  a  white-throated  sparrow  in  another, 
both  far  away  in  the  mist.  It  was  strange  they 
should  be  so  happy,  I  was  ready  to  say.  But  I 
bethought  myself  that  their  case  was  no  different 
from  my  own.  It  was  comparatively  clear  just 
about  me,  while  the  fog  shut  down  like  a  curtain 
a  rod  or  two  away,  leaving  the  rest  of  the  world 
dark.  So  every  bird  stood  in  a  ring  of  light,  an 
illuminated  chantry  all  his  own, 

And  sang  for  joy,  good  Christian  bird, 
To  be  thus  marked  and  favored. 

Strange  had  he  not  been  happy.    To  be  blest 
above  one's  fellows  is  to  be  blest  twice  over. 
This  time  I  took  the  downward  road,  turning 


6  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

to  the  left,  and  found  myself  at  once  in  pleasant 
woods,  with  hospitable  openings  and  bypaths  ;  a 
birdy  spot,  or  I  was  no  prophet,  though  just  now 
but  few  voices  were  to  be  heard,  and  those  of  the 
commonest.  Here  stood  new-blown  anemones, 
bellworts,  and  white  violets,  an  early  flock,  with 
one  painted  trillium  lording  it  over  them ;  a  small 
specimen  of  its  kind,  but  big  enough  to  be  king 
(or  shepherd)  in  such  company.  A  brook,  or 
perhaps  two,  with  the  few  birds,  sang  about  me, 
invisible.  I  knew  not  whither  I  was  going,  and 
the  all-embracing  cloud  deepened  the  mystery. 
Soon  the  road  took  a  sudden  dip,  and  a  louder 
noise  filled  my  ears.  I  was  coming  to  a  river  ? 
Yes,  for  presently  I  was  on  the  bridge,  with  a 
raging  mountain  torrent,  eighty  feet,  perhaps, 
underneath,  foaming  against  the  boulders;  a 
bare,  perpendicular  cliff  on  one  side,  and  perpen- 
dicular spruces  and  hemlocks  draping  a  similar 
cliff  on  the  other  side.  It  was  Baker's  River,  I 
was  told  afterward,  —  the  same  that  I  had  looked 
at  here  and  there,  the  day  before,  from  the  car 
window.  It  was  good  to  see  it  so  young  and  ex- 
uberant ;  but  even  a  young  river  need  not  be  so 
much  in  haste,  I  thought.  It  would  get  to  the 
sawmills  soon  enough,  and  by  and  by  would 
learn,  too  late,  that  it  is  only  a  little  way  to  the 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE  7 

Once  over  the  bridge,  the  road  climbed  quickly 
out  of  the  narrow  gorge,  and  at  the  first  turn 
brought  me  in  sight  of  a  small  painted  house, 
with  a  small  orchard  of  thrifty-looking  small 
trees  behind  it.  Here  a  venerable  collie  came 
running  forth  to  bark  at  the  stranger,  but  yielded 
readily  to  the  usual  blandishments,  and  after 
sniffing  again  and  again  at  my  heels,  just  to 
make  sure  of  knowing  me  the  next  time,  went 
back,  contented,  to  lie  down  in  his  old  place  be- 
fore the  window.  He  was  the  only  person  that 
spoke  to  me  —  the  only  one  I  met  —  during 
the  forenoon,  though  I  spent  it  all  on  the  high- 
way. 

Another  patch  of  woods,  where  a  distant 
Canadian  nuthatch  is  calling  (strange  how  I 
love  that  nasal,  penetrating,  far-reaching  voice, 
whose  quality  my  reasoning  taste  condemns), 
and  I  see  before  me  another  house,  standing  in 
broad  acres  of  cleared  land.  This  one  is  not 
painted,  and,  as  I  presently  make  out,  is  unin- 
habited, its  old  tenant  gone,  dead  or  discouraged, 
and  no  new  one  looked  for ;  an  "  abandoned 
farm,"  such  as  one  grows  used  to  seeing  in  our 
northern  country.  It  is  beautiful  for  situation, 
one  of  those  sightly  places  which  the  city-worn 
passer-by  in  a  mountain  wagon  pitches  upon  at 
once  as  just  the  place  he  should  like  to  buy  and 


8  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

retire  to  —  some  day ;  in  that  autumn  of  golden 
leisure  of  which,  now  and  then, 

"  When  all  his  active  powers  are  still," 

he  has  a  pleasing  vision.  Oh  yes,  he  means  to 
do  something  of  that  kind  —  some  day ;  and  even 
while  he  talks  of  it  he  knows  in  his  heart  that 
"  some  day  "  is  only  another  name  for  "  next  day 
after  never." 

A  few  happy  barn  swallows  (wise  enough,  or 
simple  enough,  to  be  happy  now)  go  skimming 
over  the  grass,  and  a  pair  of  robins  and  a  pair 
of  bluebirds  seem  to  be  at  home  in  the  orchard ; 
which  they  like  none  the  worse,  we  may  be  sure, 
—  the  bluebirds,  especially,  —  because,  along 
with  the  house  and  the  barn,  it  is  falling  into 
decay.  What  are  apple  trees  for,  but  to  grow 
old  and  become  usefully  hollow  ?  Otherwise  they 
would  be  no  better  than  so  many  beeches  or 
butternuts.  It  is  impossible  but  that  every  crea- 
ture should  look  at  the  world  through  its  own 
eyes;  and  no  bluebird  ever  ate  an  apple.  A 
purple  finch  warbles  ecstatically,  a  white-throated 
sparrow  whistles  in  the  distance,  and  now  and 
then,  from  far  down  the  slope,  I  catch  the  up- 
liftings  of  a  hermit  thrush. 

A  man  grows  thoughtful,  not  to  say  senti- 
mental, in  such  a  place,  surrounded  by  fields  on 
which  so  many  years  of  human  labor  have  been 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILATJKE  9 

spent,  so  much  ploughing  and  harrowing,  plant- 
ing and  reaping,  now  given  up  again  to  nature. 
Here  was  the  garden  patch,  its  outlines  still 
traceable.  Here  was  the  well.  Long  lines  of 
stone  wall  still  separate  the  mowing  land  from 
the  pasturage ;  and  scattered  over  the  fields  are 
heaps  of  boulders,  thrown  together  thus  to  get 
them  out  of  the  grass's  way.  About  the  edges 
of  every  pile,  and  sometimes  through  the  midst, 
have  sprung  up  a  few  shrubs,  —  shad  bushes, 
cherries,  willows,  and  the  like,  Here  they  escape 
the  scythe,  as  we  are  all  trying  to  do.  "  Give  us 
room  that  we  may  dwell !  "  —  so  these  children 
of  Zion  cry.  It  is  the  great  want  of  seeds,  so 
many  millions  of  which  go  to  waste  annually  in 
every  acre,  —  a  place  in  which  to  take  root  and 
(harder  yet)  to  keep  it.  And  the  birds,  too,  find 
the  boulder  heaps  a  convenience.  I  watch  a  sa- 
vanna sparrow  as  he  flits  from  one  to  another, 
stopping  to  sing  a  measure  or  two  from  each. 
Even  this  humble,  almost  voiceless  artist  needs 
a  stage  or  platform.  The  lowliest  sparrow  ever 
hatched  has  some  rudiments  of  a  histrionic  fac- 
ulty ;  and  be  we  birds  or  humans,  it  is  hard  to 
do  one's  best  without  a  bit  of  posing. 

What  further  uses  these  humble  stone  heaps 
may  serve  I  cannot  say ;  no  doubt  they  shelter 
many  insects ;  but  it  is  encouraging  to  consider 


10  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

how  few  things  a  farmer  can  do  that  will  not  be 
of  benefit  to  others  beside  himself.  Surely  the 
man  who  piled  these  boulders  for  the  advantage 
of  his  hay  crop  never  expected  them  to  serve  as 
a  text  for  preaching. 

The  cloud  drops  again,  and  is  at  its  old  trick 
of  exaggeration.  A  bird  that  I  take  for  a  robin 
turns  out  to  be  a  sparrow.  Did  it  look  larger 
because  it  seemed  to  be  farther  away  than  it  really 
was?  Or  is  it  seen  now  as  it  actually  is,  my 
vision  not  being  deceived,  but  rather  corrected 
of  an  habitual  error  ?  The  fog  makes  for  me  a 
newer  and  stranger  world,  at  any  rate  ;  I  am 
farther  from  home  because  of  it ;  another  day's 
travel  might  have  done  less  for  me.  And  for  all 
that,  I  am  not  sorry  when  it  rises  again,  and  the 
hills  come  out.  How  beautiful  they  are !  They 
will  hardly  be  more  so,  I  think,  when  the  June 
foliage  replaces  the  square  miles  of  bare  boughs 
which  now  give  them  a  blue-purple  tint,  inter- 
rupted here  and  there  by  patches  of  new  yellow- 
green  poplar  leaves  —  a  veritable  illumination, 
sun-bright  even  in  this  sunless  weather  —  or  a 
few  sombre  evergreens. 

As  I  get  away  from  the  farm,  the  mountain 
woods  on  either  side  seem  to  be  filled  with  some- 
thing like  a  chorus  of  rose-breasted  grosbeaks. 
Except  for  a  few  days  at  Highlands,  North  Caro- 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          11 

lina,  some  years  ago,  I  have  never  seen  so  many 
together.  A  grand'"  migratory  wave  "  must  have 
broken  on  the  mountains  within  a  night  or  two. 
As  far  as  music  is  concerned,  the  grosbeaks  have 
the  field  mostly  to  themselves,  though  a  grouse 
beats  his  drum  at  short  intervals,  and  now  and 
then  a  white-throat  whistles.  There  is  no  bird's 
voice  to  which  a  fog  is  more  becoming,  I  say  to 
myself,  with  a  pleasing  sense  of  having  said 
something  unintended.  To  my  thinking,  the 
white-throat  should  always  be  a  good  distance 
away  (perhaps  because  in  the  mountains  one 
grows  accustomed  to  hearing  him  thus)  ;  and 
the  fog  puts  him  there,  with  no  damage  to  the 
fullness  of  his  tone. 

Looking  at  the  flowers  along  the  wayside,  — 
a  few  yellow  violets,  a  patch  of  spring-beauties, 
and  little  else,  —  my  eye  falls  upon  what  seems 
to  be  a  miniature  forest  of  curious  tiny  plants 
growing  in  the  gutter.  At  first  I  see  only  the 
upright,  whitish  stalks,  an  inch  or  two  in  height, 
each  bearing  at  the  top  a  globular  brown  knob. 
Afterward  I  discover  that  the  stalks,  which,  ex- 
amined more  closely,  have  a  crystalline,  glassy 
appearance,  spring  from  a  leaf -like  or  lichen-like 
growth,  lying  prostrate  upon  the  wet  soil.  The 
plant  is  a  liverwort,  or  scale-moss,  of  some  kind, 
I  suppose,  and  is  growing  here  by  the  mile.  How 


12  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

few  are  the  things  we  see !  And  of  those  we  see, 
how  few  there  are  concerning  which  we  have  any 
real  knowledge,  —  enough,  even,  to  use  words 
about  them !  (When  a  man  can  do  that  concern- 
ing any  class  of  natural  objects,  no  matter  what 
they  are  or  what  he  says  about  them,  he  passes 
with  the  crowd  for  a  scholar,  or  at  the  very  least 
a  "  close  observer.")  But  to  tell  the  shameful 
truth,  my  mood  just  now  is  not  inquisitive.  I 
should  like  to  know  ?  Yes  ;  but  I  can  get  on 
without  knowing.  There  are  worse  things  than 
ignorance.  Let  this  plant  be  what  it  will.  I 
should  be  little  the  wiser  for  being  able  to  name 
it.1  I  have  no  body  of  facts  to  which  to  attach 
this  new  one ;  and  unrelated  knowledge  is  almost 
the  same  as  none  at  all.  At  best  it  is  quickly 
forgotten.  So  my  indolence  excuses  itself. 

The  road  begins  to  climb  rather  sharply.  Un- 
less I  am  going  to  the  top  of  the  ridge  and 
beyond,  I  have  gone  far  enough.  So  I  turn  my 
back  upon  the  mountain ;  and  behold,  the  cloud 
having  lifted  again,  there,  straight  before  me 
down  the  road  and  across  the  valley,  is  the 
house  from  which  I  set  out,  almost  or  quite  the 
only  one  in  sight.  After  all,  I  have  walked  but 
a  little  way,  though  I  have  been  a  good  while 

1  It  may  have  been  some  species  of  Pellia,  to  judge  by  the 
plate  in  Gray's  Manual. 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          13 

about  it;  for  I  have  hardly  begun  my  return 
before  I  find  myself  again  approaching  the 
abandoned  farm.  Downhill  miles  are  short. 
Here  a  light  shower  comes  on,  and  I  raise  my 
umbrella.  Then  follows  a  grand  excitement 
among  a  flock  of  sheep,  whose  day,  perhaps, 
needs  enlivening  as  badly  as  my  own.  They 
gaze  at  the  umbrella,  start  away  upon  the  gal- 
lop, stop  again  to  look  ("  There  are  forty  look- 
ing like  one,"  I  say  to  myself),  and  are  again 
struck  with  panic.  This  time  they  scamper 
down  the  field  out  of  sight.  Another  danger 
escaped !  Shepherds,  it  is  evident,  cannot  be  so 
effeminate  as  to  carry  umbrellas. 

Two  heifers  are  of  a  more  confiding  disposi- 
tion, coming  close  to  look  at  the  stranger  as  he 
sits  on  the  doorsill  of  the  old  barn.  Their  curi- 
osity concerning  me  is  perhaps  about  as  lively 
as  mine  was  touching  the  supposed  liverworts. 
Like  me  they  stand  and  consider,  but  betray  no 
unmannerly  eagerness.  "Who  is  he,  I  won- 
der?" they  might  be  saying ;  "  I  never  saw  him 
before."  But  their  jaws  still  move  mechanically, 
and  their  beautiful  eyes  are  full  of  a  peaceful 
satisfaction.  A  cud  must  be  a  great  alleviation 
to  the  temper.  With  such  a  perennial  sedative, 
how  could  any  one  ever  be  fretted  into  nervous 
prostration?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  am  told, 


14  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

cows  rarely  or  never  suffer  from  that  most  dis- 
tressing ailment.  I  have  seen  chewers  of  gum 
before  now  who,  by  all  signs,  should  have  enjoyed 
a  similar  immunity. 

While  the  heifers  are  still  making  up  their 
minds  about  their  unexpected  visitor,  I  turn  to 
examine  a  couple  of  white-crowned  sparrows, 
male  and  female,  —  I  wonder  if  they  really  are 
a  couple?  —  feeding  before  the  house.  I  hope 
the  species  is  to  prove  common  here.  Three 
birds  were  behind  the  hotel  before  breakfast, 
and  one  of  them  sang.  The  quaint  little  medley, 
sparrow  song  and  warbler  song  together,  is  still 
something  of  an  event  with  me,  I  have  heard  it 
so  seldom  and  like  it  so  well ;  and  whether  the 
birds  sing  or  not,  they  are  musical  to  look  at. 

When  I  approach  the  painted  house,  on  my 
way  homeward,  the  fat  old  collie  comes  running 
out  again,  barking.  This  time,  however,  he 
takes  but  one  sniff.  He  has  made  a  mistake, 
and  realizes  it  at  once.  "Oh,  excuse  me,"  he 
says  quite  plainly.  "I  didn't  recognize  you. 
You  're  the  same  old  codger.  I  ought  to  have 
known."  And  he  is  so  confused  and  ashamed 
that  he  hurries  away  without  waiting  to  make 
up. 

It  is  a  great  mortification  to  a  gentlemanly 
dog  to  find  himself  at  fault  in  this  manner.  I 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          15 

remember  another  collie,  much  younger  than 
this  one,  with  whom  I  once  had  a  minute  or  two 
of  friendly  intercourse.  Then,  months  afterward, 
I  went  again  by  the  house  where  he  lived,  and 
he  came  dashing  out  with  all  fierceness,  as  if  he 
would  rend  me  in  pieces.  I  let  him  come  (there 
was  nothing  else  to  do,  or  nothing  else  worth 
doing),  but  the  instant  his  nose  struck  me  he 
saw  his  error.  Then,  in  a  flash,  he  dropped  flat 
on  the  ground,  and  literally  licked  my  shoes. 
There  was  no  attitude  abject  enough  to  express 
the  depth  of  his  humiliation.  And  then,  like  the 
dog  of  this  morning,  he  jumped  up,  and  ran 
with  all  speed  back  to  his  doorstep. 

Another  descent  into  the  gorge  of  Baker's 
River,  and  another  stop  on  the  bridge  (how 
gloriously  the  water  comes  down !),  and  I  am 
again  in  the  pretty,  broken  woods  below  the 
hotel.  Here  my  attention  is  attracted  by  an 
almost  prostrate  but  still  vigorous  yellow  birch, 
like  the  one  that  stood  for  so  many  years  by  the 
road  below  the  Profile  House,  in  the  Franconia 
Notch.  Somehow  the  tree  got  an  awkward  slant 
in  its  youth,  and  has  always  kept  it,  while  the 
larger  branches  have  grown  straight  upward,  at 
right  angles  with  the  trunk,  as  if  each  were  trying 
to  be  a  tree  on  its  own  account.  The  Franconia 
Notch  specimen  became  a  landmark,  and  was 


16  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

really  of  no  inconsiderable  service ;  a  convenience 
to  the  hotel  proprietors,  and  a  means  of  health 
to  idle  boarders,  who  needed  an  incentive  to  ex- 
ercise. "  Come,  let 's  walk  down  as  far  as  the  bent 
tree,"  one  would  say  to  another.  The  average 
American  cannot  stroll ;  he  has  never  learned ; 
if  he  puts  his  legs  in  motion,  he  must  go  to 
some  fixed  point,  though  it  be  only  a  milestone 
or  a  huckleberry  bush.  The  infirmity  is  most 
likely  congenital,  a  taint  in  the  blood.  The 
fathers  worked,  —  all  honor  to  them,  —  having 
to  earn  their  bread  under  hard  conditions ;  and 
the  children,  though  they  may  dress  like  the 
descendants  of  princes,  cannot  help  turning  even 
their  amusements  into  a  stint. 

And  the  sapient  critic?  Well,  instead  of 
carrying  a  fishing  rod  or  walking  to  a  bent  tree, 
he  had  come  out  with  an  opera-glass,  and  had 
made  of  his  morning  jaunt  a  bird-cataloguing 
expedition.  Considered  in  that  light,  the  trip 
had  not  been  a  brilliant  success.  In  my  whole 
forenoon  I  had  seen  and  heard  but  twenty-eight 
species.  If  I  had  stayed  in  my  low-country  vil- 
lage, and  walked  half  as  far,  I  should  have 
counted  twice  as  many.  But  I  should  not  have 
enjoyed  myself  one  quarter  as  well. 

The  next  day  and  the  next  were  rainy,  with 
Moosilauke  still  invisible.  Then  came  a  morn- 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          17 

ing  of  sunshine  and  clear  atmosphere.  So  far  it 
was  ideal  mountain  weather ;  but  the  cold  wind 
was  so  strong  at  our  level  that  it  was  certain 
to  be  nothing  less  than  a  hurricane  at  the  top. 
I  waited,  therefore,  twenty-four  hours  longer. 
Then,  at  quarter  before  seven  on  the  morning 
of  May  23,  I  set  out.  I  am  as  careful  of  my 
dates,  it  seems,  as  if  I  had  been  starting  for  the 
North  Pole.  And  why  not  ?  The  importance  of 
an  expedition  depends  upon  the  spirit  in  which  it 
is  undertaken.  Nothing  is  of  serious  consequence 
in  this  world  except  as  subjective  considerations 
make  it  so.  Even  the  North  Pole  is  only  an 
imaginary  point,  the  end  of  an  imaginary  line, 
as  old  geographies  used  to  inform  us,  pleonas- 
tically,  —  as  if  "position  without  dimensions," 
a  something  without  length,  breadth,  or  thick- 
ness, could  be  other  than  imaginary.  I  started, 
then,  at  quarter  before  seven.  Many  years  ago 
I  had  been  taken  up  the  mountain  road  in  a  car- 
riage ;  now  I  would  travel  it  on  foot,  spending 
at  least  an  hour  upon  each  of  its  five  miles,  and 
so  see  something  of  the  mountain  itself,  as  well 
as  of  the  prospect  from  the  summit. 

The  miles,  some  longer,  some  shorter,  as  I 
thought  (a  not  unpleasant  variety,  though  the 
fourth  stage  was  excessively  spun  out,  it  seemed 
to  me,  perhaps  to  make  it  end  at  the  spring), 


18  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

are  marked  off  by  guideboards,  so  that  the  new- 
comer need  not  fall  into  the  usual  disheartening 
mistake  of  supposing  himself  almost  at  the  top 
before  he  has  gone  halfway.  As  for  the  first 
mile,  which  must  measure  near  a  mile  and  a  half, 
and  which  ends  just  above  the  "  second  brook  " 
(every  mountain  path  has  its  natural  waymarks), 
I  had  been  over  it  twice  within  the  last  few  days, 
so  that  the  edge  of  my  curiosity  was  dulled ;  but, 
with  one  excuse  and  another,  I  managed  easily 
enough  to  give  it  its  allotted  hour.  For  one 
thing,  a  hairy  woodpecker  detained  me  five  or  ten 
minutes,  putting  such  tremendous  vigor  into  his 
hammering  that  I  was  positively  certain  (with 
a  shade  of  uncertainty,  nevertheless,  such  as  all 
"observers"  will  understand;  there  is  nothing 
so  true  as  a  paradox)  that  he  must  be  a  pileatus, 
till  at  last  he  showed  himself.  "  Well,  well,"  said 
I,  "  guesswork  is  a  poor  dependence."  It  was 
well  I  had  stayed  by.  The  forest  was  so  nearly 
deserted,  so  little  animated,  that  I  felt  under  ob- 
ligation to  the  fellow  for  every  stroke  of  his  mal- 
let. Though  a  man  goes  to  the  wood  for  silence, 
his  ear  craves  some  natural  noises,  —  enough,  at 
least,  to  make  the  stillness  audible. 

The  second  mile  is  of  steeper  grade  than  the 
firsthand  toward  the  close  brought  me  suddenly 
to  a  place  unlike  anything  that  had  gone  before. 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          19 

I  named  it  at  once  the  Flower  Garden.  For  an 
acre,  or,  more  likely,  for  two  or  three  acres,  the 
ground  —  a  steep  southern  exposure,  held  up  to 
face  the  sun  —  was  covered  with  plants  in  bloom : 
Dutchman's-breeches  (Dicentra  cucullaria),  — 
bunches  of  heart-shaped,  cream-white  flowers 
with  yellow  facings,  looking  for  all  the  world 
as  if  they  had  been  planted  there ;  round-leaved 
violets,  in  profusion ;  white  violets  (blanda)  ; 
spring-beauties ;  adder 's-tongue  (dog's-tooth  vio- 
let); and  painted  trillium.  A  pretty  show;  pretty 
in  itself,  and  a  thousand  times  prettier  for  being 
happened  upon  thus  unexpectedly,  after  two  hours 
of  woods  that  were  almost  as  dead  as  winter. 

Only  a  little  way  above  this  point  were  the 
first  beds  of  snow ;  and  henceforward,  till  I  came 
out  upon  the  ridge,  two  miles  above,  the  woods 
were  mostly  filled  with  it,  though  there  was  little 
in  the  road.  About  this  time,  also,  I  began  to 
notice  a  deer's  track.  He  had  descended  the 
road  within  a  few  hours,  as  I  judged,  or  since  the 
last  rainfall,  and  might  have  been  a  two-legged, 
or  even  a  one-legged  animal,  —  biped  or  uniped, 
—  so  far  as  his  footsteps  showed.  I  should 
rather  have  seen  him,  but  the  hoofprints  were 
a  deal  better  than  nothing;  and  undoubtedly 
I  saw  them  much  longer  than  I  could  possibly 
have  seen  the  maker  of  them,  and  so,  perhaps, 


20  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

got  out  of  them  more  of  companionship.  They 
were  with  me  for  two  hours,  —  clean  up  to  the 
ridge,  and  part  way  across  it. 

Somewhere  between  the  third  and  fourth  mile- 
boards  I  stopped  short  with  an  exclamation. 
There,  straight  before  me,  over  the  long  eastern 
shoulder  of  Moosilauke,  beyond  the  big  Jobil- 
dunk  Ravine,  loomed  or  floated  a  shining  snow- 
white  mountain-top.  Nothing  could  have  been 
more  beautiful.  It  was  the  crest  of  Mount 
Washington,  I  assumed,  though  even  with  the 
aid  of  a  glass  I  could  make  out  no  sign  of  build- 
ings, which  must  have  been  matted  with  new- 
fallen  snow.  I  took  its  identity  for  granted,  I 
say.  The  truth  is,  I  became  badly  confused 
about  it  afterward,  such  portions  of  the  range 
as  came  into  view  having  an  unfamiliar  aspect ; 
but  later  still,  on  arriving  at  the  summit,  found 
that  my  first  idea  had  been  correct. 

That  sudden,  heavenly  apparition  gave  me, 
one  of  those  minutes  that  are  good  as  years. 
Once,  indeed,  in  early  October,  I  had  seen 
Mount  Washington  when  it  was  more  resplen- 
dent :  freshly  snow-covered  throughout,  and  then, 
as  the  sun  went  down,  lighted  up  before  my  eyes 
with  a  rosy  glow,  brighter  and  brighter  and 
brighter,  till  it  seemed  all  on  fire  within.  But 
even  that  unforgettable  spectacle  had  less  of 


A  JMAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          21 

unearthly  beauty,  was  less  a  work  of  pure  en- 
chantment, I  thought,  than  this  detached,  fleecy- 
looking  piece  of  aerial  whiteness,  cloud  stuff  or 
dream  stuff,  yet  whiter  than  any  cloud,  lying  at 
rest  yonder,  almost  at  my  own  level,  against  the 
deep  blue  of  the  forenoon  sky. 

All  this  while,  the  birds,  which  had  been  few 
from  the  start,  —  black-throated  greens  and 
blues,  Blackburnians,  oven-birds,  a  bay-breast, 
blue  yellow-backs,  siskins,  Swainson  thrushes, 
a  blue-headed  vireo,  winter  wrens,  rose-breasted 
grosbeaks,  chickadees,  grouse,  and  snowbirds,  — 
had  grown  fewer  and  fewer,  till  at  last,  among 
these  stunted,  low-branched  spruces,  with  the 
snow  under  them,  there  was  little  else  but  an 
occasional  myrtle  warbler  ("  The  brave  myrtle," 
I  kept  saying  to  myself),  with  its  musical,  soft 
trill,  so  out  of  place,  —  the  voice  of  peaceful 
green  valleys  rather  than  of  stormy  mountain- 
tops, —  yet  so  welcome.  Once  a  gray-cheeked 
thrush  called  just  aboye  me.  These  impenetra- 
ble upper  woods  are  the  gray-cheeks'  summer 
home,  —  a  worthy  one  ;  but  I  heard  nothing  of 
their  wild  music,  and  doubted  whether  they  had 
yet  arrived  in  full  summer  force. 

It  was  past  eleven  o'clock  when  I  came  out  at 
the  clearing  by  the  woodpile,  with  half  the  world 
before  me.  From  this  point  it  was  but  a  little 


22  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

way  to  the  bare  ridge  connecting  the  South  Peak 
—  up  which  I  had  been  trudging  all  the  fore- 
noon —  and  the  main  summit.  This,  with  its 
little  hotel,  that  looked  as  if  it  were  in  danger  of 
sliding  off  the  mountain  northward,  was  straight 
before  me  across  the  ravine,  a  long  but  easy  mile 
away. 

On  the  ridge  I  found  myself  all  at  once  in 
something  like  a  gale  of  ice-cold  wind.  Who 
could  have  believed  it?  It  was  well  I  had 
brought  a  sweater ;  and  squatting  behind  a  lucky 
clump  of  low  evergreens,  I  wormed  my  way  into 
what  is  certainly  the  most  comfortable  of  all  gar- 
ments for  such  a  place,,  —  as  good,  at  least,  as 
two  overcoats.  Now  let  the  wind  whistle,  espe- 
cially as  it  was  at  my  back,  and  was  bearing 
me  triumphantly  up  the  slope.  So  I  thought, 
bravely  enough,  till  the  trail  took  a  sudden 
shift,  and  the  gale  caught  me  on  another  tack. 
Then  I  sang  out  of  the  other  corner  of  my 
mouth,  as  I  used  to  hear  country  people  say. 
I  no  longer  boasted,  but  saved  my  breath  for 
better  use. 

Wind  or  no  wind,  it  is  an  exhilaration  to  walk 
here  above  the  world.  Once  a  bird  chirps  to  me 
timidly  from  the  knee-wood  close  by.  I  answer 
him,  and  out  peeps  a  white-throat.  "  You  here  !  " 
he  says ;  "  so  early !  "  At  my  feet  is  plenty  of 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          23 

Greenland  sandwort, — faded,  winter-worn,  gray- 
green  tufts,  tightly  packed  among  the  small 
boulders.  "Whatever  lives  here  must  lie  low  and 
hang  on.  And  with  it  is  the  shiny-leaved  moun- 
tain cranberry, —  Vaccinium  Vitis-Idcea.  Let 
me  never  omit  that  pretty  name.  Neither  cran- 
berry nor  sandwort  shows  any  sign  of  blossom 
or  bud  as  yet ;  but  it  is  good  to  know  that  they 
will  both  be  ready  when  the  clock  strikes.  I  can 
see  them  now,  pink  and  white,  just  as  they  will 
look  in  July  —  nay,  just  as  they  will  look  a 
thousand  years  hence. 

Again  my  course  alters,  and  the  wind  lets  me 
lean  back  upon  it  as  it  lifts  me  forward.  Who 
says  we  are  growing  old?  The  years,  as  they 
pass,  may  turn  and  look  at  us  meaningly,  as 
if  to  say,  "  You  have  lived  long  eriough ; "  yet 
even  to  us  the  climbing  of  a  mountain  road 
(though  by  this  time  it  must  be  a  road,  or  some- 
thing like  it)  is  still  only  the  putting  of  one  foot 
before  the  other. 

So  I  come  at  last  to  the  top,  and  make  haste 
to  get  into  the  lee  of  the  house,  which  is  tightly 
barred,  of  course,  just  as  its  owners  left  it  seven 
or  eight  months  ago.  The  wind  chases  me  round 
the  corners,  one  after  another ;  but  by  searching 
I  discover  a  nook  where  it  can  hit  me  no  more 
than  half  the  time.  Here  I  sit  and  look  at  the 


24  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

mountains,  —  a  glorious  company :  Mount  Wash- 
ington and  its  fellows,  with  all  their  higher  parts 
white;  the  sombre  mass  of  the  Twins  on  this 
side  of  them ;  and,  nearer  still,  the  long,  sharp, 
purple  crest  of  dear  old  Lafayette  and  its  south- 
ern neighbors.  So  many  I  can  name.  The  rest 
are  mountains  only ;  a  wilderness  of  heaped- 
up,  forest-covered  land ;  a  prospect  to  dilate  the 
soul. 

My  expectation  has  been  to  stay  here  for  two 
hours  or  more ;  but  the  wind  is  merciless,  and 
after  going  out  over  the  broad,  bare,  boulder- 
sprinkled  summit  till  I  can  see  down  into  Fran- 
conia  (which  looks  pretty  low  and  pretty  far  off, 
though  I  distinguish  certain  of  the  buildings 
clearly  enough),  I  begin  to  feel  that  I  shall  enjoy 
the  sight  of  my  eyes  better  from  some  sheltered 
position  on  the  upper  part  of  the  road.  Even  on 
the  ridge,  however,  I  take  advantage  of  every 
tuft  of  spruces  to  stand  still  for  a  bit,  looking 
especially  at  the  mountain  itself,  so  big,  so  bare, 
and  so  solid :  East  Peak,  South  Peak,  and  the 
Peak,  as  they  are  called,  although  neither  of 
them  is  in  the  slightest  degree  peaked,  with  the 
great  gulf  of  Jobildunk  —  in  which  Baker's 
Eiver  rises  —  wedged  among  them.  If  the  word 
Moosilauke  means  a  "  bald  place,"  as  it  is  said 
to  do,  then  we  have  here  another  proof  of  the 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          25 

North  American  Indian's  genius  for  fitting  words 
to  things.1 

Even  to-day,  windy  and  cold  as  it  is,  a  butter- 
fly passes  over  now  and  then  (mostly  red  admi- 
rals), and  smaller  insects  flit  carelessly  about. 
Insects  are  capable  mountaineers,  as  I  have  often 
found  occasion  to  notice.  The  only  time  I  was 
ever  on  the  sharp  point  of  Mount  Adams,  where 
my  companion  and  I  had  barely  room  to  stand 
together,  the  air  about  our  heads  was  black  with 
insects  of  all  sorts  and  sizes,  a  veritable  cloud ; 
and  when  we  unscrewed  the  Appalachian  Club's 
brass  bottle  to  sign  the  roll  of  visitors,  we  found 
that  the  signers  immediately  before  us,  after  put- 
ting down  a  date  and  their  names,  had  added, 
"  Plenty  of  bugs."  And  surely  I  was  never  pes- 
tered worse  by  black  flies  than  once,  years  ago,  on 
this  very  summit  of  Moosilauke.  All  the  hours 
of  a  long,  breathless,  tropical  July  day  they  made 
life  miserable  for  me.  Better  a  thousand  times 
such  a  frosty,  man-compelling  wind  as  I  am  now 
fleeing  from. 

Once  off  the  ridge,  I  can  loosen  my  hat  and 
sit  down  in  comfort.  The  sun  is  good.  How  in- 

1  And  if  New  Hampshire  people  will  call  the  mountain 
"  Moose  Hillock,"  as,  alas,  they  will,  then  we  have  here  another 
proof  of  the  degeneracy  which  follows  the  white  man's  addic- 
tion to  the  punning  habit,. 


26  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

credible  it  seems  that  the  air  is  so  furiously  in  mo- 
tion only  fifty  rods  back !  Here  it  is  like  Elysium. 
And  almost  I  believe  that  this  limited  prospect 
is  better  than  the  grander  sweep  from  the  summit 
itself,  —  less  distracting  and  more  restful.  So 
half  a  loaf  may  be  better  than  a  whole  one,  if  a 
man  cannot  be  contented  without  trying  to  eat  the 
whole  one.  A  white-throat  and  a  myrtle  warbler 
sing  to  me  as  I  nibble  my  sandwich.  They  are 
the  loftiest  spirits,  it  appears.  I  take  off  my  hat 
to  them. 

Already  I  am  down  far  enough  to  catch  the 
sound  of  running  water ;  and  every  rod  brings  a 
new  mountain  into  view  from  behind  the  long 
East  Peak.  One  of  the  best  of  them  all  is  cone- 
shaped  Kearsarge,  topped  with  its  house.  Now 
the  white  crest  of  Washington  rises  upon  me,  — 
snow  with  the  sun  on  it ;  and  here,  by  the  fourth 
mileboard,  are  a  few  pale-bright  spring-beauties, 
—  five  or  six  blossoms  only.  They  have  found  a 
bit  of  earth  from  which  the  snow  melted  early, 
and  here  they  are,  true  to  their  name,  with  the 
world  on  every  side  nothing  but  a  desolation.  If  it 
is  time  for  myrtle  warblers,  why  not  for  them  ? 
Now  I  see  not  only  Washington,  but  the  moun- 
tains with  it,  all  strangely  foreshortened,  so  as  to 
give  the  highest  peak  a  most  surprising  preemi- 
nence. No  wonder  I  was  in  doubt  what  to  call  it. 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          27 

In  days  past  I  have  walked  that  whole  ridge,  from 
Clinton  to  Adams  ;  and  glad  I  am  to  remember 
it.  A  man  should  do  such  things  while  he  can, 
teaching  his  feet  to  feel  the  ground,  and  letting 
his  heart  cheer  him. 

A  turn  in  the  road,  and  straight  below  me  lies 
my  deserted  farmhouse.  Another  turn,  and  I  lose 
it.  In  ascending  a  mountain  we  face  the  path ; 
in  descending  we  face  the  world.  I  speak  thus 
because  at  this  moment  I  am  looking  down  a 
charming  vista,  —  forest-covered  mountains,  row 
beyond  row.  But  for  the  gravel  under  my  feet  I 
might  be  a  thousand  miles  from  any  human  habi- 
tation. Presently  a  Swainson  thrush  whistles. 
By  that  token  I  am  getting  away  from  the  sum- 
mit, though  things  are  still  wintry  enough,  with 
no  sign  of  bud  or  blossom. 

And  look !  What  is  that  far  below  me,  facing 
up  the  road  ?  A  four-footed  beast  of  some  kind. 
A  bear  ?  No  ;  I  raise  my  glass,  and  see  a  porcu- 
pine. He  has  his  mobile,  sensitive  nose  to  the 
ground,  and  continues  to  smell,  and  perhaps  to 
feed,  as  I  draw  nearer  and  nearer.  By  and  by, 
being  very  near,  and  still  unworthy  of  the  crea- 
ture's notice,  I  roll  a  stone  toward  him.  At  this 
he  shows  a  gleam  of  interest.  He  sits  up,  folds 
his  hands,  —  puts  his  fore  paws  together  over  his 
breast,  —  looks  at  me,  and  then  waddles  a  few 


28  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

steps  toward  the  upper  side  of  the  road.  "  I  must 
be  getting  out  of  this,"  he  seems  to  think.  But 
he  reconsiders  his  purpose,  comes  back,  sits  on 
end  again  and  folds  his  hands ;  and  then,  the  re- 
connoissance  being  satisfactory,  falls  to  smelling 
the  ground  as  before.  I  can  see  the  tips  of  his 
nostrils  twitching  as  in  a  kind  of  ecstasy.  There 
must  be  something  savory  under  them.  Mean- 
time, still  with  my  glass  lifted,  I  come  closer  and 
closer,  till  I  am  right  upon  him.  If  porcupines 
can  shoot,  I  must  be  in  danger  of  a  quill.  An- 
other step  or  two,  and  he  waddles  to  the  lower 
side  of  the  road.  He  is  a  vacillating  body,  how- 
ever ;  and  once  more  he  turns  to  sit  up  and  fold 
his  hands.  This  time  I  hear  him  rattling  his  teeth, 
but  not  very  fiercely,  —  nothing  to  compare  with 
the  gnashings  of  an  angry  woodchuck ;  and  at 
last,  when  I  cluck  to  him,  he  hastens  his  steps  a 
little,  as  much,  perhaps,  as  a  porcupine  can,  and 
disappears  in  the  brush,  dragging  his  ridiculous, 
sloping,  straw-thatched  hinder  parts  —  a  combi- 
nation of  lean-to  and  L  —  after  him.  He  has 
never  cultivated  speed  or  decision  of  character, 
having  a  better  defense.  So  far  as  appearances 
go,  he  is  certainly  an  odd  one. 

There  are  no  blossoms  yet,  nor  visible  promise 
of  any,  but  once  in  a  while  a  bright  Atalanta  (red 
admiral)  butterfly  flits  before  me.  I  wonder 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          29 

if  I  could  capture  one  by  the  old  schoolboy 
method  ?  I  am  moved  to  try ;  but  my  best  effort 
—  not  very  determined,  it  must  be  confessed  — 
ends  in  failure.  Perhaps  I  should  have  had  some 
golden  apples. 

At  last  I  come  to  a  few  adder's-tongues,  the 
first  flowers  since  the  five  or  six  spring-beauties  a 
mile  and  a  half  back.  Yes,  I  am  approaching  the 
Flower  Garden ;  for  here  is  a  most  lovely  bank 
of  yellow  violets,  a  hundred  or  two  together,  a 
real  bed  of  them.  Nobody  ever  saw  anything 
prettier.  Here,  also,  is  the  showy  purple  trillium, 
not  so  unhandsomely  overgrown  as  it  sometimes 
is,  in  addition  to  all  the  flowers  that  I  noticed  on 
the  ascent.  A  garden  indeed.  I  pull  up  a  root 
of  Dutchman's-breeches,  and  sit  down  to  examine 
the  cluster  of  rice-like  pink  kernels  at  the  base 
of  the  stem.  Excellent  fodder  they  must  make 
for  animals  of  some  kind.  "  Squirrel-corn  "  is  an 
apt  name,  I  think,  though  I  believe  it  is  applied, 
not  to  this  species,  but  to  its  relative,  Dicentra 
Canadensis. 

The  whole  plant  is  uncommonly  clean-looking 
and  attractive,  with  its  pale,  finely  dissected  leaves 
and  its  delicate,  waxy  bloom;  but  looking  at 
it,  and  then  at  a  bank  of  round-leaved  violets  op- 
posite, I  say  once  more,  "  Those  are  my  flowers." 
Something  in  the  shade  of  color  is  most  exactly 


30  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

to  my  taste.  The  very  sight  of  them  gladdens 
me  like  sunshine.  But  before  I  get  out  of  the 
garden,  as  I  am  in  no  haste  to  do  (if  it  was  at- 
tractive this  morning,  it  is  doubly  so  now,  after 
those  miles  of  snowbanks),  I  am  near  to  chang- 
ing my  mind ;  for  suddenly,  as  my  eye  follows 
the  border  of  the  road,  it  falls  upon  a  small  blue 
violet,  the  first  of  that  color  that  I  have  noticed 
since  my  arrival  at  Moosilauke.  It  must  be  my 
long-desired  SelMrldi,  I  say  to  myself,  and  down 
I  go  to  look  at  it.  Yes,  it  is  not  leafy-stemmed, 
the  petals  are  not  bearded,  and  the  leaves  are  un- 
like any  I  have  ever  seen.  I  take  it  up,  root  and 
all,  and  search  carefully  till  I  find  one  more.  If 
it  is  Selkirkii,  as  I  feel  sure  it  is,1  then  I  am 
happy.  This  is  the  one  species  of  our  eastern  North 
American  violets  that  I  have  never  picked.  It 
completes  my  set.  And  it  is  especially  good  to 
find  it  here,  where  I  was  not  in  the  least  expect- 
ing it.  With  the  two  specimens  in  my  pocket  I 
trudge  the  remaining  two  miles  in  high  spirits. 
The  violets  are  no  newer  to  me  than  the  liver- 
wort specimens  on  Mount  Cushman  were,  but 
they  have  the  incomparable  advantage  of  things 
long  looked  for,  —  things  for  the  lack  of  which, 
so  to  speak,  a  pigeonhole  in  the  mind  has  stood 

1  And  so  it  was ;  for  though  I  felt  sure,  I  wanted  to  be  sure, 
and  submitted  it  to  an  expert. 


A  MAY  VISIT  TO  MOOSILAUKE          31 

consciously  vacant.  Blessed  are  they  who  want 
something,  for  when  they  get  it  they  will  be 
glad. 

The  weather  below  had  been  warm  and  still, 
a  touch  of  real  summer.  So  said  the  people  at 
the  hotel ;  and  I  knew  it  already ;  for,  as  I  came 
through  the  cattle  pasture,  I  saw  below  me  a 
new,  strange-looking,  brightly  illuminated  grove 
of  young  birches.  "  Were  those  trees  there  this 
morning  ? "  I  thought.  A  single  day  had  cov- 
ered them  with  sunny,  yellow-green  leaves,  till 
the  change  was  like  a  miracle.  Indeed,  it  was  a 
miracle.  May  the  spring  never  come  when  I  shall 
fail  to  feel  it  so.  Then  I  looked  back  at  the  sum- 
mit. Was  it  there,  no  farther  away  than  that, 
that  so  icy  a  wind  had  chased  me  about?  —  or 
had  I  been  in  Greenland? 


A  WEEK   ON   MOUNT  WASHINGTON 

I  WENT  up  Mount  Washington  in  the  afternoon 
of  August  22d,  and  came  down  again  in  the 
afternoon  of  the  29th.  Ten  years  before  I  had 
spent  a  week  there,  in  early  July,  and  had  not 
visited  the  place  since.  In  some  respects,  of 
course,  the  summit  is  badly  damaged  (I  have 
heard  it  spoken  of  as  utterly  ruined)  by  the  pre- 
sence of  the  hotel  and  other  buildings,  not  to  men- 
tion the  railway  trains,  with  their  daily  freight 
of  bustling  lunch-box  tourists.  Still  the  railway 
and  the  hotel  are  indisputable  conveniences ; 
I  should  hardly  have  stayed  there  so  long  with- 
out them ;  and  in  this  imperfect  world  we  must 
not  expect  to  find  all  the  good  things  in  one 
basket. 

As  for  the  tourists,  one  need  walk  but  a  few 
steps  to  be  rid  of  them.  As  a  class  they  are 
not  enterprising  pedestrians.  In  fifteen  minutes 
you  may  find  yourself  where  human  beings  are 
as  far  away,  practically,  as  if  you  were  among 
the  highest  Andes  or  on  the  famous  "  peak  in 
Darien."  There  you  may  sit  on  a  boulder,  or  re- 
cline on  a  mat  of  prostrate  willow,  and  imagine 


A  WEEK  ON  MOUNT  WASHINGTON     33 

yourself  the  only  man  in  the  world ;  gazing  at  the 
prospect,  listening  to  the  mountain  silence  (there 
is  none  like  it),  or  eating  alpine  blueberries,  as 
lonely  as  any  hermit's  heart  could  wish.  All  this 
you  may  do,  and  then  return  to  the  most  obliging 
of  hosts,  the  best  of  good  dinners,  and  a  comfort- 
able bed. 

By  the  time  you  have  been  there  two  days, 
moreover,  you  will  have  begun  to  enjoy  the  hotel, 
not  only  for  its  physical  comforts,  but  as  an  in- 
teresting miniature  world.  The  manager  and  the 
clerk,  the  waiters  and  the  bellboys,  the  editors 
and  the  printers,  the  night  watchman  and  the 
train  conductor,  will  all  have  become  your  friends, 
almost  your  blood  relations,  —  such  intimate 
good  feeling  does  a  joint  seclusion  induce,  —  and 
at  any  minute  of  the  day  in  may  come  a  group 
of  strangers  of  the  most  engagingly  picturesque 
sort;  having  no  more  the  appearance  of  sales- 
ladies or  women  of  fashion,  shopkeepers  or 
bankers'  clerks,  than  of  college  students  and 
professors.  They  are  men  and  women.  They 
have  put  off  the  fine  clothes  and  the  smug  ap- 
pearance which  society  exacts  of  its  members; 
they  look  not  the  least  in  the  world  as  if  they 
had  just  come  out  of  a  bandbox ;  their  negligee 
costumes  bear  no  resemblance  to  the  dainty,  im- 
maculate rig  of  the  tennis  court  or  the  golf  links. 


34  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

They  are  "  roughing  it "  in  earnest.  For  at  least 
eight  or  ten  hours,  possibly  for  as  many  days, 
they  have  ceased  to  be  concerned  about  the  cut 
of  their  garments  or  the  smoothness  of  their  hair. 
Of  some  of  them  the  aspect  is  fairly  disreputable. 
It  is  a  solemn  fact  that  you  may  here  see  gentle- 
men with  rents  in  their  trousers  and  a  week's 
beard  on  their  faces.  And  ten  to  one  they  will 
brazen  it  out  without  apology. 

The  dapper  clerk  and  the  prosperous  merchant 
and  his  wife,  who  have  ridden  up  in  the  train 
with  their  good  clothes  and  their  company  faces 
on,  may  stare  if  they  will.  It  is  nothing  to  the 
campers  and  walkers.  They  are  not  on  parade, 
and  do  not  mind  being  smiled  at.  A  pretty  col- 
lege girl  will  walk  about  the  office,  alpenstock 
in  hand,  with  her  hair  tied  in  a  careless  knot, 
her  skirts  well  above  the  tops  of  her  scratched 
and  dusty  boots,  her  face  brown  and  her  sleeves 
tucked  up,  and  seem  quite  as  much  at  ease  as  if 
she  were  in  full  evening  dress  with  the  drawing- 
room  lights  blazing  upon  her  alabaster  shoulders, 
her  laces,  and  her  diamonds.  It  is  heroism  (or 
heroinism)  of  a  kind  worth  seeing. 

You  are  still  enjoying  the  spectacle  when  two 
men  enter  the  door,  one  with  a  botanical  box 
slung  over  his  shoulder.  It  is  as  if  he  had  given 
you  the  Masonic  grip,  and  you  hardly  wait  for 


A  WEEK  ON  MOUNT  WASHINGTON      35 

him  to  cross  the  sill  before  you  make  up  to  him 
with  a  question.  By  which  route  has  he  come, 
and  what  luck  has  he  met  with  ?  Over  the  Craw- 
ford path,  he  answers,  and  though  the  season  is 
pretty  late,  and  Alpine  plants  are  mostly  out  of 
bloom,  he  has  found  some  interesting  things. 

Two  or  three  of  them  he  cannot  name,  and  he 
opens  the  box.  His  special  puzzle  is  a  tiny,  up- 
right-growing plant,  thickly  set  with  roundish, 
crinkled  leaves,  and  bearing  a  few  blossoms  so 
exceedingly  small  as  almost  to  defy  a  common 
pocket-lens.  Do  you  know  what  it  is  ?  Yes,  to 
your  own  surprise,  you  remember,  or  seem  to  re- 
member, and  you  run  upstairs  to  bring  down  a 
Gray's  Manual.  The  plant  is  Euphrasia  (eye- 
bright),  an  Alpine  variety.  It  was  pointed  out 
to  you  ten  years  ago,  near  the  same  Crawford 
path,  by  the  man  who  knew  the  Mount  Wash- 
ington flora  better  than  any  one  else.  You  recall 
the  time  as  if  it  had  been  yesterday.  Your  com- 
panion dropped  suddenly  upon  his  knees,  eyes 
to  the  ground.  "  What  are  you  looking  for  ?  " 
you  asked  ;  and  he  answered  "  Euphrasia."  It 
is  good  to  see  it  again.  You  find  it  for  yourself 
the  next  day,  it  may  be,  in  the  Alpine  Garden. 

And  this  other  plant,  stiffly  matted  and  long 
past  flowering  ?  Your  new  acquaintance  supposes 
it  to  be  Diapensia ;  and  for  that  you  need  no 


36  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

book.  And  this  third  one,  with  its  -rusty  leaves, 
is  the  Lapland  azalea.  You  remember  the  day 
you  saw  it  first  —  in  middle  June  —  when  all  by 
yourself  you  were  making  your  first  ascent  of  the 
mountain,  walking  alternately  over  snowbanks 
and  beds  of  flowers.  So  far  as  the  lovely  blos- 
soms are  concerned,  you  have  never  seen  it  since. 
Next  morning  your  botanist  bids  you  good-by ; 
he  is  going  down  by  the  way  of  Tuckerman's 
Eavine ;  and  at  noon,  after  some  indolent,  happy 
hours  on  the  carriage-road  and  in  the  Alpine 
Garden,  you  are  again  in  the  hotel  office  when 
half  a  dozen  campers  from  the  northern  peaks 
make  their  appearance.  Dusty,  travel-stained, 
disheveled,  they  bring  the  freedom  of  the  hills 
with  them  and  fill  the  place  with  their  breezi- 
ness.  Some  of  the  "  transients  "  clustered  about 
the  stove  smile  at  a  sight  so  unconventional,  but 
the  manager,  the  clerk,  and  the  bellboys  are  bet- 
ter informed.  They  have  seen  the  leader  of  the 
party  before,  and  in  a  minute  the  word  is  passed 
round.  This  is  Mr. ,  who  came  up  the  moun- 
tain with  his  son  a  year  ago  on  the  day  of  that 
dreadful  storm,  when  two  later  adventurers  upon 
the  same  path  perished  by  the  way,  and  he  him- 
self, old  mountaineer  that  he  was,  with  another 
life  hanging  upon  his  own,  had  more  than  once 
been  all  but  ready  to  say,  "  It  can't  be  done." 


A  WEEK  ON  MOUNT  WASHINGTON      37 

Your  traveling  companion  has  seen  him  here 
before,  though  she  was  not  present  on  that  mem- 
orable occasion,  and  presently  you  are  being  in- 
troduced to  him  and  his  friends  —  a  metropolitan 
clergyman,  a  university  professor,  and  a  younger 
man,  with  whose  excellent  work  in  your  own  line 
you  are  already  acquainted. 

Anon  the  company  breaks  up,  —  the  pedes- 
trians are  off  for  an  afternoon  excursion,  —  and 
you  step  out  upon  the  platform  to  look  about 
you.  Against  the  railing  are  two  men,  one  of 
them  with  what  seems  to  be  a  "  collecting  gun  " 
in  his  hand.  "An  ornithologist,"  you  say  to 
yourself,  and  at  the  word  you  begin  edging  to- 
ward him.  A  remark  or  two  about  the  weather 
and  you  ask  him  point-blank  if  he  is  collecting 
birds.  No,  he  answers,  his  weapon  is  a  rifle,  and 
he  shows  you  the  cartridge.  He  has  brought  it 
along  to  shoot  squirrels  with.  You  wonder  why 
any  one  should  think  it  worth  while  to  carry  a 
gun  over  the  nine  miles  of  the  Crawford  path 
for  so  trifling  a  use ;  but  that  is  none  of  your 
business,  and  just  then  the  other  man  speaks  up 
to  say  that  his  companion  is  a  botanist,  while  he 
himself  is  a  "bird  man."  This  is  interesting 
(the  second  ornithologist  within  an  hour),  and 
you  set  about  comparing  notes.  Did  he  hear 
anything  of  the  Bicknell  thrushes  and  the  Hud- 


38  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 


sonian  chickadees  on  his  way  up  ?  No,  he  missed 
them  both  on  this  trip,  though  he  has  met  them 
elsewhere  in  the  mountains.  You  drop  an  inno- 
cent remark  about  the  thrushes,  and  he  says, 
"  Are  you  Mr.  So-and-So  ?  "  There  is  no  deny- 
ing it,  and  when  he  pronounces  his  own  name  it 
proves  to  be  familiar ;  and  a  good  talk  follows. 
Then  he  starts  down  into  the  Alpine  Garden,  — 
you  charging  him  to  be  sure  to  eat  some  of  the 
delicious  cespitose  blueberries  on  the  descent,  — 
and  ten  minutes  afterward  he  turns  up  again  at 
your  elbow.  He  has  left  his  friend,  and  has 
hurried  back  to  tell  you  of  a  sharp-shinned  hawk 
that  he  has  just  seen.  You  may  put  the  name 
into  your  Mount  Washington  bird  list,  if  you 
will. 

So  the  days  pass  —  no  day  without  a  new 
acquaintance.  If  you  and  one  of  the  local  ed- 
itors start  down  the  trail  to  the  Lakes  of  the 
Clouds  after  a  Sunday-morning  breakfast,  you 
find  yourselves  going  along  with  three  Baltimore 
gentlemen,  who  have  walked  up  from  the  Craw- 
ford House  the  day  before  ("  Well,  we  arrive !  " 
you  remember  to  have  heard  the  leader  exclaim, 
as  his  foot  struck  the  hotel  platform),  and  are 
now  on  their  return. 

They  introduce  one  another  to  you  and  your 
companion,  —  Dr.  This,  Dr.  That,  and  Dr.  The 


A  WEEK  ON  MOUNT  WASHINGTON      39 

Other,  —  and  you  pick  your  way  downward  over 
the  boulders  in  Indian  file,  talking  as  you1  go. 
After  a  while  you  and  the  oldest  of  the  Balti- 
moreans  find  yourselves  falling  a  little  behind 
the  rest,  and  the  conversation  grows  more  and 
more  friendly.  He  has  come  to  New  Hampshire, 
as  he  does  every  year,  for  the  best  of  all  tonics, 
a  dose  of  mountain  climbing.  He  has  been  some- 
what overworked  of  late,  especially  with  a  long 
task  of  proof-reading.  A  new  edition  of  his 
treatise  on  chemistry  is  passing  through  the 
press,  and  the  moment  the  last  sheets  were  cor- 
rected he  broke  away  northward ;  and  here  he 
is,  walking  over  high  places,  where  he  loves  to  be. 
"  I  am  an  old  man,"  he  says ;  but  his  strength 
is  not  abated.  Far  be  the  day !  At  the  lakeside 
hands  are  shaken  and  good-bys  said.  You  will 
most  likely  never  see  each  other  again,  but  one 
of  you,  at  least,  keeps  a  bright  memory. 

It  is  a  strange  place,  the  Summit  House. 
Twice  a  day,  as  on  the  seashore,  the  tide  rises 
and  falls.  But  the  evening  flood  is  a  small  affair. 
The  crowd  comes  at  noon.  It  registers  its  name, 
eats  its  luncheon,  writes  a  postal-card,  buys  a 
souvenir,  asks  a  question  or  two,  more  or  less 
pertinent  ("  Can  you  tell  me  where  the  Tip- 
Over  House  is?"  one  good  woman  said  —  for 
the  rarified  air  plays,  queer  pranks  with  its  vie- 


40  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

tims),  possibly  looks  at  the  prospect,  probably 
snaps  a  camera,  and  then  takes  the  after-dinner 
train  for  the  base.  Evening  passengers  make 
a  longer  stay.  They  cannot  do  otherwise.  For 
them  the  sunset  and  the  sunrise  are  the  great 
events.  One  would  think  that  such  phenomena 
were  never  to  be  witnessed  in  the  low  country. 
They  watch  the  clouds,  or  more  likely  the  cloud, 
and  go  to  sleep  with  one  ear  open  for  the  sunrise 
bell. 

So  much  for  the  larger  number  of  Summit 
House  guests,  the  respectable  majority.  A  few, 
two  in  twenty,  perhaps,  arrive  on  foot ;  and 
these  are  the  good  ones  —  the  salt  of  the  moun- 
tain, so  to  speak.  This  time  I  was  not  one  of 
them,  but  I  had  no  thought  of  denying  the 
superiority  of  their  privilege. 


ABOVE  THE  BIKDS 

IN  the  course  of  my  seven  days  at  the  summit  of 
Mount  Washington  I  listed  six  species  of  birds. 
A  few  snowbirds  —  three  or  four  —  were  to  be 
found  almost  always  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
stables ;  a  myrtle  warbler  was  seen  on  the  climb 
up  the  cone  from  the  Lakes  of  the  Clouds; 
twice  I  heard  a  goldfinch  passing  somewhere 
overhead ;  a  sharp-shinned  hawk,  as  I  took  it  to 
be,  showed  itself  one  day,  none  too  clearly,  flying 
through  the  mist ;  and  the  next  afternoon,  as  I 
sat  in  the  rear  of  the  old  Tip-Top  House  waiting 
for  the  glories  of  the  sunset,  a  sparrow  hawk 
shot  past  me  so  near  as  to  display  not  only  his 
rusty  tail,  but  the  black  bands  on  the  side  of  his 
neck.  Here  are  five  species.  The  sixth  was  one 
that,  rightly  or  wrongly,  I  should  not  have  ex- 
pected to  find  in  so  treeless  a  place.  I  speak  of 
the  red-breasted  (or  Canadian)  nuthatch.  On 
two  mornings,  as  all  hands  were  out  upon  the 
platform  at  sunrise,  we  heard  the  characteristic 
nasal  calls  of  this  northern  forester,  and  saw  two 
birds  scrambling  about  the  roofs  of  the  buildings ; 
and  more  than  once  at  other  times  I  noticed  one 


42  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

or  two  on  the  wing.  The  species  is  very  common 
this  season  in  Franconia,  —  where  it  was  ex- 
tremely scarce  a  year  ago,  —  and  I  was  pleased 
at  the  summit  when  a  lady  standing  near  me 
remarked  to  her  husband,  "  Why,  that  is  the 
note  we  have  been  hearing  so  continually  at  the 
Rangeleys."  It  was  so  incessant  there,  she  told 
me,  as  to  be  almost  a  trouble.  Let  us  hope  that 
this  autumnal  abundance  in  New  Hampshire 
foreshadows  a  nuthatch  winter  in  Massachusetts. 

The  all  but  total  absence  of  birds  at  the 
summit  was  a  most  striking  thing.  It  helped 
greatly  to  intensify  the  loneliness  and  the 
silence;  that  wonderful  mountain  silence  —  no 
leaf  to  rustle,  no  brook  to  murmur,  no  bird  to 
sing  —  which,  wherever  I  walked,  I  was  always 
stopping  to  listen  to.  I  should  love  to  praise  it, 
but  language  for  such  a  purpose  would  need  to 
be  found  on  the  spot,  the  stillness  itself  suggest- 
ing the  words;  and  I  came  down  from  the 
summit  more  than  a  week  ago.  It  must  have 
been,  I  think,  something  like  that  apocalyptic 
"  silence  in  heaven." 

As  for  the  birds,  I  should  have  felt  their 
absence  more  disagreeably  but  for  the  fact  that 
I  had  a  novel  and  absorbing  occupation  with 
which  to  enliven  my  walks,  and  even  to  beguile 
effectually  what  otherwise  might  have  been  the 


ABOVE  THE  BIRDS  43 

idle  odds  and  ends  of  the  day.  For  the  nonce  I 
had  turned  entomological  collector.  My  search 
was  for  rare  Alpine  insects.  Not  that  I  knew 
anything  about  them;  it  would  have  been  all 
one  to  me  if  most  of  what  I  saw  had  been  created 
out  of  nothing  the  day  before;  but  I  was  in 
learned  company  and  needed  no  science  of  my 
own.  My  part  was  to  carry  a  "  cyanide  bottle  " 
and  put  into  it  any  beetle,  moth,  fly,  or  other 
insect  —  ants  and  spiders  excepted  —  on  which 
I  could  lay  my  ignorant  fingers.  The  possessor 
of  the  learning  —  enough  and  to  spare  for  the 
two  of  us  —  has  made  many  collecting  visits  to 
the  summit ;  her  list  of  Mount  Washington 
species  numbers  more  than  sixteen  hundred,  if 
I  remember  the  figures  correctly,  and  no  incon- 
siderable proportion  of  them  are  honored  with 
her  name.  A  proud  lot  they  would  be,  if  they 
knew  it.  But  the  end  is  not  yet;  there  are 
many  winged  mountaineers  still  to  be  pinned, 
and  in  the  prosecution  of  such  an  enterprise,  so 
she  gave  me  to  understand,  two  bottles  are  better 
than  one,  no  matter  who  carries  the  second  one. 
Her  language  was  rather  encouraging  than  com- 
plimentary, it  might  have  seemed,  but  I  did  not 
mind ;  and  for  seven  days  I  was  never  without  a 
bottle  about  my  person  except  when  I  lay  in  bed. 
If  I  went  down  to  the  Lakes  of  the  Clouds, 


44  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

for  example,  the  poison-bottle  went  with  me ; 
and  the  looker-on,  had  there  been  one,  —  as 
luckily  there  was  n't,  —  might  have  seen  me  on 
my  knees,  with  hands  outstretched  over  the 
water,  struggling  to  snatch  from  the  surface 
a  poor,  unhappy  "  skater,"  or  a  "  lucky-bug " 
(it  really  was  lucky,  for  it  got  away  while  the 
skater  perished),  as  a  possible  prize  for  my 
lady's  cork-lined  box.  On  a]l  my  jaunts  down 
the  carriage-road  (and  they  were  many,  longer 
or  shorter,  that  route  offering  the  readiest  means 
of  escape  from  the  frequent  summit-capping 
cloud)  the  same  scientific  vial  was  my  compan- 
ion. If  a  grasshopper  jumped  (not  the  common 
one  with  banded  legs,  of  which  I  saw  a  super- 
fluity, but  a  handsome,  rare-looking  green  fellow, 
making  me  think  of  Leigh  Hunt's  "  green  little 
vaulter  in  the  sunny  grass"),  I  stole  murder- 
ously after  him,  and  with  a  reckless  clutch  at 
the  stunted  bush  on  which  he  had  settled  I 
gathered  him  in  and  put  him  to  sleep.  (This 
was  well  done,  for  he  was  really  of  a  wingless 
Alpine  species,  and  only  my  employer's  third 
specimen  of  his  kind.)  If  a  "  daddy-long-legs," 
prayerless  friend  of  my  childhood,  crawled 
across  the  way,  he,  too,  hapless  creature,  with 
legs  so  superfluously  numerous  and  elongated 
that  he  could  not  hurry,  even  to  save  his  life, 


ABOVE  THE  BIRDS  45 

fell  a  victim  to  my  uninstructed  zeal.  He  died 
easily,  for  all  his  undevout  habits,  but  the  sac- 
rifice was  useless.  He  proved  to  be  no  longer 
among  the  entomologist's  desiderata,  though  he 
also  is  Alpine,  and  it  is  not  many  years  since 
she  herself  discovered  him  here,  an  insect  till 
then  unregistered  by  human  science. 

All  caterpillars  I  was  bidden  to  bring  in  alive ; 
and  so,  of  course,  I  did,  rolling  them  up  in 
scraps  of  soft  paper  and  committing  them  ten- 
derly to  a  pocket.  My  chief  business,  however, 
after  I  had  breathed  the  air,  eaten  my  fill  of 
mountain  blueberries  ("  Happy,"  said  I,  "  is  the 
mouth  that  feeds  on  such  manna  "),  and  looked 
my  fill  at  the  northern  peaks,  —  for  I  was  not 
employed  by  the  day,  but  by  the  piece,  and 
could  steal  an  hour  to  myself  now  and  then  with 
a  clear  conscience,  —  my  principal  occupation,  I 
say,  was  to  pry  under  the  boulders  for  beetles. 
"Leave  no  stone  unturned,"  the  entomologist 
had  said,  with  her  fine  gift  of  laconic  quotation ; 
but  she  could  not  have  intended  the  commission 
to  be  taken  literally.  The  stones  were  too 
many,  and  human  existence  is  too  brief.  She 
meant  no  more  than  that  I  should  use  a  reason- 
able diligence ;  and  so  much  I  surely  did,  till 
the  ends  of  my  fingers  were  in  danger  of  being 
skinned  alive.  Down  on  all  fours  I  got,  lifted  a 


46  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

stone  quickly,  fastened  an  eagle  eye  upon  the 
exposed  hollow,  and  if  a  dark  object,  no  matter 
how  small  or  how  large,  was  seen  to  be  scurry- 
ing to  its  burrow,  I  thrust  my  fingers  into  the 
dirt  in  frantic  efforts  to  seize  it.  I  knew  not 
which  were  common  and  which  rare ;  my  only 
course  was  to  let  none  escape.  But  many  were 
too  swift  for  me,  with  all  my  efforts,  and  of 
all  that  I  captured  in  this  manner  I  am  not 
sure  that  one  was  "  worth  mounting."  I  quote 
those  last  two  words  partly  by  way  of  emphasis. 
They  stood  for  the  lowest  round  in  the  ladder  of 
my  entomological  ambition.  What  I  most  of  all 
desired  was  to  discover  a  new  species ;  next  I 
coveted  a  species  new  to  New  England;  after 
that  a  species  new  to  Mount  Washington  ;  and 
last  of  all  a  specimen  worth  saving,  or,  as  my 
employer  said,  "  worth  mounting  "  —  in  short, 
worth  a  pin. 

My  most  productive  field,  like  her  own,  was 
about  the  front  of  the  hotel  itself.  In  warm 
afternoons  flies,  beetles,  moths  and  what  not  are 
known  to  drop  out  of  the  invisible,  from  nobody 
can  tell  where,  upon  the  windows  or  the  white 
clapboards  of  the  house.  Here,  not  once,  but 
with  something  like  regularity,  insects  have  been 
captured,  the  Hke  of  which  have  never  been  seen 
elsewhere  except  in  the  West  Indies  or  Mexico, 


ABOVE  THE  BIRDS  47 

in  Greenland  or  among  the  Kocky  Mountains. 
How  such  wanderers  come,  and  why,  are  among 
the  things  that  no  man  knoweth.  Enough  that 
they  are  known  to  come.  And  who  could  tell 
but  one  might  have  come  for  me  ?  Here,  at  all 
events,  was  my  golden  opportunity.  Let  me  not 
miss  it.  If  by  chance,  therefore,  the  lady  herself 
stepped  inside  for  a  minute  or  two,  I  hastened  to 
take  her  place.  Tourists  by  the  dozen  might  be 
watching  me  curiously,  or  even  derisively,  my 
equanimity  was  undisturbed.  Science  is  a  shield. 
Vial  in  hand  (my  vade-mecum  I  called  it,  Latin 
being  in  the  air),  I  walked  along  the  platform, 
with  my  eyes  upon  the  glass  and  the  paint,  and 
woe  to  the  unlucky  insect  that  was  there  taking 
the  sun.  The  yawning  mouth  of  a  bottle  was 
clapped  over  him,  the  world  swam  before  his 
eyes,  and  long  before  he  knew  it  he  was  on  his 
way  to  be  a  specimen.  Strange  things  happen  to 
insects,  though  they  are  not  the  only  ones  who 
have  found  perdition  in  a  bottle. 

Sometimes  I  climbed  the  stairs  to  the  upper 
floors  of  the  observatory.  No  matter  how  high  I 
went,  the  higher  the  better.  In  the  warm  hours 
of  the  day  the  air  at  the  very  top  was  almost  a 
cloud  of  tiny  wings.  "  Excelsior  "  is  the  insects' 
watchword.  Once,  in  the  upper  room,  I  bottled 
carelessly  a  small  black-and-white  moth.  Its 


48  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

appearance  was  ordinary  enough ;  no  doubt  it 
was  common ;  but  it  was  an  insect,  and  hit  or 
miss  I  took  it  in.  And  in  due  course  it  went 
into  the  entomologist's  hands  with  the  rest  of 
the  catch.  She  emptied  the  vial,  and  passed  an 
unexciting  comment  or  two  upon  the  few  flies 
and  beetles  it  contained ;  perhaps  she  remarked 
that  one  of  them  might  be  worth  mounting  —  I 
do  not  remember  precisely;  it  was  a  way  she 
had  of  egging  me  on ;  but  the  next  morning  she 
said :  "  You  did  n't  tell  me  anything  about  the 
lovely  moth  you  took  yesterday."  I  was  obliged 
to  stop  and  think.  "  Oh,  that  little  black-and- 
white  thing,"  I  said.  Yes,  that  was  the  one  — 
"  new  to  the  summit."  If  I  was  not  proud,  then 
pride  does  not  dwell  in  earthly  minds.  This,  I 
confide,  was  not  my  only  contribution  to  the 
fauna  of  our  highest  New  England  mountain ; 
I  seem  to  remember  a  short-winged  beetle  also ; 
but  the  moth,  being  in  the  Lepidoptera,  is  my 
especial  glory.  I  wish  I  could  recall  its  name, 
that  I  might  print  it  here  for  the  reading  of 
future  generations. 

With  such  pursuits  did  I  improve  the  spare 
hours  of  my  Mount  Washington  week.  I  have 
no  thought  of  boasting.  At  least  I  would  not 
seem  to  do  so.  It  was  little  enough  that  I  accom- 
plished, or  could  hope  to  accomplish,  hampered 


ABOVE  THE  BIRDS  49 

as  I  was  by  my  ignorance.  Probably  I  shall 
never  have  a  beetle,  much  less  a  moth,  named 
after  me ;  but  with  that  precious  black-and-white 
rarity  in  mind  I  feel  that  even  in  the  way  of 
entomology  I  have  not  lived  altogether  in  vain. 

Scientific  studies  apart,  the  best  hours  of  the 
week  (after  some  spent  along  the  carriage-road, 
resting  here  and  there  upon  a  boulder  to  enjoy 
the  magnificent,  ever-shifting  prospect,  and  some 
—  not  hours,  alas,  but  minutes  —  spent  in  eat- 
ing the  ambrosial,  banana-savored,  soul-satisfying 
berries  of  Vaccinium  ccespitosum)  —  my  best 
hours,  I  say,  were  perhaps  those  of  a  certain  won- 
derful evening.  The  air  was  warm,  no  breath 
stirring,  the  sky  clear,  and  the  half  world  below 
us,  as  we  walked  the  hotel  platform,  lay  covered 
with  white  clouds,  on  which  the  full  moon  was 
shining.  The  stillness,  the  mildness,  the  bright- 
ness, the  sense  of  elevation,  and  the  bewitching, 
unearthly  scene,  all  this  was  like  an  evening  in 
fairyland.  For  the  time  being,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
even  the  rarest  of  moths  would  have  seemed  a 
matter  of  secondary  importance.  Such  is  the 
power  of  beauty.  So  truly  was  it  born  to  make 
other  things  forgotten. 


MOUNTAIN-TOP  AND  VALLEY 

NOTHING  heightens  appreciation  like  a  contrast. 
After  a  week  at  the  summit  of  Mount  Washing- 
ton, where  we  lived  in  the  clouds  and  above 
them,  in  a  world  above  the  world,  we  returned 
to  the  lowlands.  The  afternoon  was  sultry,  and 
before  the  descent  was  half  accomplished  —  by 
the  train  —  we  wished  ourselves  back  again  on 
the  heights.  How  can  men  live  in  such  an  at- 
mosphere, we  asked  each  other ;  so  stifling,  so 
depressing,  so  wanting  in  all  the  elements  of  vi- 
tality. Our  condition  seemed  like  that  of  fishes 
out  of  water,  and  we  began  to  think  of  angling 
as  a  cruel  sport.  It  grieved  us  to  see  the  trees 
growing  taller.  Even  the  laughing  young  Am- 
monoosuc  was  looked  upon  with  indifference.  "  I 
wish  I  were  back,"  said  one ;  and  the  other  re- 
sponded, "  So  do  I." 

At  Fabyan's  the  crowd  surged  about  us  like  a 
sea.  Baggage  must  be  found  and  checked,  our 
train  was  waiting,  and  the  baggage-master,  true 
railway  "official"  that  he  was,  was  not  to  be 
hastened.  His  steps  were  all  taken  by  rule,  and 
every  movement  of  his  hands  was  set  to  slow 


MOUNTAIN-TOP  AND  VALLEY  51 

music.  When  lie  spoke,  which  was  seldom,  it  was 
in  a  muffled  voice  and  with  funereal  moderation. 
In  the  midst  of  all  that  bustle  he  was  calm  — 

"  Calm  as  to  suit  a  calmer  grief." 

You  might  say  what  you  pleased  to  him,  be 
urgently  argumentative,  or  plaintive  even  to 
wheedling,  it  was  all  one.  Your  eloquence  was 
wasted.  It  was  like  nudging  a  graven  image,  or 
crying  haste  in  the  ear  of  Death.  Not  a  feature 
of  his  countenance  altered,  not  a  muscle  quick- 
ened. Who  ever  knew  the  hands  of  a  clock  to 
accelerate  their  pace  in  response  to  human  im- 
patience ?  Time  and  tide  —  and  a  baggage-mas- 
ter —  hurry  for  no  man. 

"Two  trunks  for  Bethlehem,"  you  say.  No 
answer.  By  and  by,  meekly  insistent,  and  think- 
ing that  by  this  time  your  turn  must  surely  have 
come,  you  repeat  the  words.  No  answer.  But  the 
man  is  taking  down  checks  from  their  peg,  and 
in  due  time,  stepping  as  to  the  measure  of  a 
dirge,  he  marches  with  them  down  the  platform. 
"  These  are  mine,"  you  say,  keeping  an  uneasy 
pace  or  two  in  advance  and  pointing  to  the 
trunks  on  the  truck.  No  answer  —  not  so  much 
as  a  look.  Nor  is  there  need  of  any.  You  are 
silenced.  That  implacable  manner  carries  all 
before  it.  You  could  not  speak  again,  even  to 


52  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

claim  your  soul.  But  finally  the  man  himself 
speaks.  You  are  relieved  to  know  he  can.  He 
is  addressing  you.  The  minute  hand  is  at  twelve 
and  the  clock  strikes.  "  These  are  yours  ?  "  he 
asks.  You  reply  in  the  affirmative,  as  best  you 
are  able.  "  For  Bethlehem  ?  "  he  asks,  and  you 
answer  "  Yes."  And  then,  after  one  more  set  of 
machine-like  motions,  the  mighty  work  is  accom- 
plished. The  checks  are  yours.  Fortunately,  the 
train  has  not  yet  pulled  away,  though  it  is  past 
the  time,  and  at  the  last  moment  you  see  the 
trunks  on  board. 

Trifles  like  these  would  have  been  as  nothing,  of 
course,  to  ordinary  travelers ;  but  to  us,  innocent 
Carthusians,  fresh  from  the  unearthly  quiet  of  a 
mountain-top,  they  were  little  short  of  tragical. 
And  how  intolerably  hot  and  close  the  car  was ! 
Things  were  growing  worse  and  worse  with  us. 
Should  we  live  to  reach  Bethlehem,  with  nothing 
but  this  blast  out  of  Nebuchadnezzar's  furnace 
in  our  nostrils?  Why  had  we  not  remained 
where  existence  was  not  a  struggle,  but  a  dream 
of  pleasure ;  where  the  air  had  not  to  be  gasped 
for,  but  came  of  itself  to  be  sweetly  inhaled? 
Nevertheless,  we  survived  the  passage,  —  the  con- 
ductor helping  to  pass  the  time  by  stopping  in 
the  aisle  to  make  inquiries  touching  a  little  flock 
of  puzzling  birds,  crossbills,  perhaps,  lately  seen 


MOUNTAIN-TOP  AND  VALLEY  53 

in  his  apple  orchard,  —  and  at  Bethlehem  the 
carriage  awaited  us.  This  was  a  welcome  change, 
but  even  so  we  still  found  it  difficult  to  draw 
breath;  and  when  the  horses  started,  what  a 
dust  they  set  flying!  Truly,  between  the  heat 
and  the  drought,  this  lower  world  was  in  an  evil 
case.  It  was  a  road  of  sighs  all  the  six  miles  to 
Franconia. 

Once  there,  however,  and  supper  eaten,  I 
stepped  out  upon  the  piazza  and  looked  west- 
ward. Venus  was  bright  just  above  the  near 
horizon  (the  near  horizon!),  and  against  the 
sunset  sky  stood  a  line  of  low  woods,  with  de- 
tached pine  trees  towering  over  the  rest.  And  in 
that  sight  I  discovered  anew,  all  in  a  moment, 
the  charm  of  this  valley  world.  I  had  seen  no- 
thing like  this  from  the  mountain-top.  Yes,  good 
as  the  summit  prospect  was,  this  was  in  some 
respects  better.  If  that  was  more  magnificent, 
more  soul-expanding,  this  was  more  home-felt 
and  beautiful.  And  as  I  looked  and  looked,  while 
the  light  faded  out  of  the  sky,  I  was  conscious 
of  a  new  contentment.  Mountain-tops  for  visits, 
I  said,  and  may  I  enjoy  them  often;  but  the 
valley  to  live  in. 

The  next  morning  I  was  no  sooner  abroad 
than  this  happy  impression  was  renewed  and 
deepened.  It  was  a  comfort  to  the  feet  to  be 


64  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

going  neither  uphill  nor  downhill,  and  it  rested 
the  eyes  to  be  looking  not  at  remote  peaks  and 
dimly  discovered  sheets  of  water,  but  into  green 
branches  so  near  that  the  leaves  could  be  seen, 
and  the  blue  sky  through  them.  How  sweetly 
the  ripple  of  the  brook  came  to  my  ears  as  it 
ran  over  its  stony  bed  just  beyond  the  velvety, 
smooth  meadow !  And  the  cawing  of  a  dozen  or 
two  of  crows,  who  were  talking  politics  among  the 
pines  on  the  hillside,  affected  me  most  agreeably. 
There  was  something  of  real  neighborliness  about 
it.  I  would  gladly  have  taken  a  hand  in  the  dis- 
cussion, if  they  would  have  let  me.  When  a  song 
sparrow  started  out  of  the  hedge  at  my  elbow 
it  gave  me  a  start  of  surprise.  I  had  become  so 
unused  to  such  movements  !  A  robin's  sudden 
cackle  I  thought  almost  the  sweetest  of  music ; 
the  careless  warble  of  a  bluebird  was  nothing 
less  than  a  voice  from  heaven;  and  a  squirrel 
sputtering  defiance  from  the  stone  wall  set  me 
laughing  with  pleasure.  None  of  these  sounds, 
nor  anything  akin  to  them,  was  to  be  heard  on 
the  desolate,  boulder-covered  top  of  Mount 
Washington. 

Now  the  trees  interlaced  their  branches  over 
my  head.  Nothing  could  be  prettier ;  and  the 
effect  was  so  novel !  I  stopped  short  to  admire 
it.  And  anon,  as  the  road  made  a  little  ascent, 


MOUNTAIN-TOP  AND  VALLEY  65 

scarcely  noticeable  to  one  fresh  from  the  steep- 
ness of  a  mountain  cone,  I  found  myself  gazing 
down  upon  one  of  the  most  engaging  scenes  in 
the  world;  a  sequestered  valley  farm,  thrifty- 
looking,  snugly  kept,  nestled  among  low  hills, 
with  a  mountain  river  winding  along  the  farther 
side  of  it,  between  the  meadow  and  the  woodland, 
now  lost  to  sight,  now  shining  in  the  sun.  I  had 
known  the  place  for  years,  as  I  had  known  the 
worthy  man  who  owns  it ;  and  I  had  looked  at 
it  many  times  from  this  very  point ;  but  I  had 
never  seen  it  till  this  morning.  A  pleasant  thing 
it  is  when  an  old  picture  or  an  old  poem,  or  both 
in  one,  is  thus  made  new.  If  our  eyes  could  but 
oftener  be  anointed ! 

The  softness  of  the  meadow,  freshly  sprung 
after  the  summer  mowing,  the  glistening  of  the 
corn  leaves,  the  narrow  road,  —  a  brown  ribbon 
laid  upon  the  green  carpet,  —  that  runs  to  the 
door  and  stops  (for  nothing  goes  by  —  nothing 
but  the  river,  the  clouds,  and  the  birds),  the  shade 
trees  clustered  lovingly  about  the  house,  the  whole 
pastoral  scene,  I  saw  it  all  with  the  vision  of  one 
who  had  been  looking  at  a  vaguely  defined,  far- 
away world,  over  which  the  eye  wandered  as  the 
dove  wandered  over  the  face  of  the  waters,  and 
now  had  come  suddenly  in  sight  of  home. 

Yes,  distance  is  a  good  painter,  but  nearness 


56  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

is  a  better  one.  So  I  felt  for  the  time  being,  at 
all  events,  falling  in  with  the  mood  of  the  hour ; 
for  it  is  well  that  moods  alter,  as  it  is  well  that 
the  earth  goes  round  the  sun  and  season  gives 
place  to  season.  Man  was  not  made  to  see  one 
kind  of  beauty,  or  to  believe  in  one  kind  of  good- 
ness. The  whole  world  is  hid  in  his  heart.  All 
things  are  his.  The  small  and  the  great,  the  near 
and  the  far,  light  and  darkness,  good  and  evil, 
the  intimacies  of  home  and  the  isolations  of  in- 
finite space,  all  are  parts  of  the  Creator's  work, 
and  equally  parts  of  the  creature's  inheritance. 

For  to-day,  then,  I  praise  the  valley.  I  am  for 
having  the  hills  close  about  me,  rather  than  afar 
off  and  far  below.  I  like  to  see  the  trees,  and  the 
leaves  on  them,  rather  than  leagues  on  leagues 
of  barely  discernible  forest ;  and  a  lonely  pool  of 
still  water  at  my  feet,  with  alders  reflected  in  it, 
is  more  in  my  eyes  than  Lake  TJmbagog  itself, 
hardly  better  than  a  blur  upon  the  landscape, 
fifty  miles  away.  To-morrow  I  may  feel  differently, 
but  for  to-day  let  me  listen  to  the  breeze  in  the 
pine  branches  and  the  brook  pattering  over  stones, 
rather  than  to  the  eternal  silences  of  the  bare 
mountain-top  and  the  brooding  sky. 


IN  THE  MOUNT  LAFAYETTE  FOKEST 

IT  is  one  of  the  cool  mornings  that  descend 
rather  suddenly  upon  our  White  Mountain 
country  with  the  coming  of  autumn ;  cool  morn- 
ings that  are  liable  to  be  followed  by  warm  days. 
I  was  in  doubt  how  to  dress  as  I  set  out,  and 
for  the  first  mile  or  two  almost  regretted  that  I 
had  not  taken  an  extra  garment.  Then  all  at 
once  the  sun  broke  through  the  clouds,  and  even 
the  one  coat  became  superfluous  and  was  thrown 
over  my  arm.  This  state  of  things  lasted  till  I 
had  crossed  the  golf  links  and  entered  the  woods. 
At  that  point  the  sun  withdrew  his  shining,  and 
now,  between  the  clouds  and  the  shadow  and 
dampness  of  the  forest,  I  have  put  on  my  coat 
again  and  buttoned  it  up ;  and  what  counts  for 
more,  I  am  driven  to  walk  less  slowly  than  one 
would  always  prefer  to  do  in  such  a  place. 

A  fresh  breeze  stirs  the  tree-tops,  so  that  I  am 
not  without  music,  let  the  birds  be  as  silent  as 
they  will.  Nearly  or  quite  the  only  voice  I  have 
so  far  heard  was  that  of  an  unseen  Maryland 
yellow-throat,  some  distance  back,  who  sprang 
into  the  air  and  delivered  himself  of  a  song  with 


58  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

variations,  all  in  his  most  rapturous  June  man- 
ner. Why  the  fellow  should  have  been  in  any- 
thing like  an  ecstasy  at  that  precise  moment  is 
quite  beyond  my  guessing.  Possibly  it  would  be 
equally  beyond  his,  if  he  were  to  stop  to  think 
about  it.  Some  sudden  stirring  of  memory,  per- 
haps. Natural  beings  seldom  know  just  why 
they  are  happy.  I  recall  the  fact,  unthought  of 
till  now,  that  I  have  not  heard  a  yellow-throat 
sing  before  for  several  weeks,  though  I  have 
seen  the  birds  often.  They  are  among  the  late 
stayers,  and  at  this  season  have  a  more  or  less 
lonesome  look,  being  commonly  found  not  as 
members  of  a  flock  or  family,  after  the  manner 
of  autumnal  warblers  in  general,  but  here  and 
there  one,  dodging  about  in  a  roadside  thicket, 
or  peeping  out  curiously  at  a  casual  passer-by. 

Just  as  I  am  remarking  upon  the  unusual 
silence  my  ear  catches  in  the  far  distance  the 
song  of  a  white-throated  sparrow.  So  very  far 
off  it  is  that  the  sound  barely  reaches  me.  In- 
deed, I  do  not  so  much  hear  it  as  become  vaguely 
conscious  that  I  should  hear  it  if  the  bird  were 
ever  so  little  nearer.  Yet  I  am  sure  he  sang  — 
as  sure  as  if  I  had  seen  him.  Probably  experi- 
enced readers  will  divine  what  I  mean,  although 
I  seem  unable  to  express  it. 

The  road  is  bordered  with  the  dead  tops  of 


IN  THE  MOUNT  LAFAYETTE  FOREST    59 

trees,  thrown  there  in  heaps  by  the  road-makers. 
They  form  an  unsightly  hedge,  which  birds  of 
various  kinds  resort  to  for  cover.  At  this  minute 
two  winter  wrens,  pert-looking,  bob-tailed  things, 
scold  at  me  out  of  it.  My  passing  is  a  trespass, 
they  consider,  and  they  tell  me  so  with  emphasis. 
For  the  sake  of  stirring  them  up  to  protest  even 
more  vigorously  (such  an  eloquent  gesticulatory 
manner  as  they  have),  I  stand  still  and  squeak 
to  them.  Few  birds  can  be  quiet  under  such  in- 
sults ;  and  the  winter  wren  is  not  one  of  them. 
There  is  nothing  phlegmatic  about  his  disposi- 
tion. He  is  like  some  beings  of  a  higher  class  : 
it  takes  very  little  to  set  him  in  a  flutter.  So  I 
squeak  and  squeak,  and  the  pair  vociferate  tut, 
tut,  till  I  have  had  enough  and  go  on  my  way 
laughing.  Touchy  people  were  made  for  teasing. 

I  have  hardly  started  before  a  hairy  wood- 
pecker's sharp  signal  is  heard,  and  within  a  min- 
ute a  sapsucker  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  way 
utters  a  snarling  note,  which  by  a  slight  effort 
of  the  imagination  might  be  taken  for  the  voice 
of  an  angry  cat.  To  my  ear  it  is  not  in  the 
smallest  degree  woodpeckerish.  I  see  the  bird  a 
moment  later  as  he  flies  across  the  road. 

In  a  mountain-side  forest  like  this,  near  the 
mountain's  foot,  the  traveler,  if  he  is  not  climb- 
ing the  slope  but  crossing  it  transversely,  is  cer- 


60  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

tain  to  come  now  and  then  upon  a  brook.  I  am 
on  the  edge  of  one  now,  and  as  the  sun  at  this 
moment  shines  out  between  two  clouds  I  stand 
still  to  enjoy  the  warmth  while  it  lasts,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  hear  the  singing  of  the  water.  Good 
music,  I  call  it,  and  fear  no  contradiction.  It  has 
the  quality  of  some  of  the  best  verse  —  liquidity. 
It  is  broken  unevenly  into  syllables,  yet  it  is  true 
to  the  beat,  and  it  flows.  In  short,  it  is  smooth, 
yet  not  too  smooth  —  with  the  smoothness  of 
water,  not  of  oil.  It  speaks  to  every  boulder  as 
it  passes.  I  wish  my  ear  were  more  at  home  in 
the  language. 

There  is  seldom  a  minute  when,  if  I  pause  to 
listen,  I  cannot  hear  from  one  direction  or  an- 
other the  quaint,  homely,  twangy,  countryfied, 
yet  to  me  always  agreeable  voice  of  Canadian 
nuthatches.  At  frequent  intervals  one  or  two 
come  near  enough  so  that  I  see  them  creeping 
about  over  the  trees,  bodies  bent,  heads  down, 
always  in  search  of  a  mouthful,  yet  keeping  up, 
every  one,  his  share  of  the  universal  chorus.  As 
well  as  I  can  judge,  all  the  evergreen  forests  of 
this  Northern  country  are  now  alive  with  these 
pretty  creatures ;  for  they  really  are  pretty.  In 
fact,  there  are  few  forest  birds  for  whom  I  cher- 
ish a  kindlier  feeling.  It  is  too  bad  they  do  not 
summer  in  our  Massachusetts  woods,  though  pos- 


IN  THE  MOUNT  LAFAYETTE  FOREST    61 

sibly  I  should  care  less  for  them  if  they  made 
themselves  neighborly  the  whole  year  long,  like 
their  relatives,  the  white-breasts. 

A  goldfinch  is  passing  far  above,  dropping 
music  as  he  goes.  He  is  one  of  the  high-fliers. 
Wherever  you  may  happen  to  be,  at  the  summit 
of  Mount  Washington  or  where  not,  you  will 
pretty  often  hear  his  sweet  voice  as  he  wanders 
under  the  sky,  dipping  and  rising,  dipping  and 
rising,  voice  and  wing  keeping  step  together. 

Here  and  there  one  or  two  clouded-sulphur 
butterflies  (Philodice)  take  wing  as  I  disturb 
them.  They  have  been  most  extraordinarily 
abundant  of  late.  A  fortnight  ago  we  drove  for 
almost  a  whole  forenoon  through  clouds  of  them, 
bunches  of  twenty  or  more  constantly  rising  from 
damp  spots  of  earth  by  the  wayside ;  and  in  a 
meadow  all  bespangled  with  purple  asters  they 
were  so  thick  as  almost  to  conceal  the  flowers. 
Twinkling  in  the  sunlight,  they  looked  a  thousand 
times  more  like  stars  than  the  asters  themselves. 
Even  the  entomologists  of  the  valley,  in  whose 
company  I  was  driving,  had  never  seen  the  like. 
Here  in  this  shaded  road  such  lovers  of  the  sun 
are  naturally  less  numerous.  In  truth,  the  won- 
der is  that  they  should  be  here  at  all.  And  yet 
the  wonder  is  not  so  very  great ;  they  wander  at 
their  own  will,  and  the  will  of  the  wind.  Only 


62  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

last  week,  I  am  told,  in  the  midst  of  a  driving 
snowstorm,  one  took  shelter  in  the  Summit  House 
on  Mount  Washington.  After  all,  a  butterfly  is 
not  exactly  a  fool ;  it  knows  enough  to  go  into 
the  house  when  it  snows. 

Now  I  come  upon  a  few  snowbirds,  hopping 
in  silence  about  the  twigs  of  a  brush-heap,  snap- 
ping their  tails  nervously,  as  if  proud  to  show 
the  white  feather ;  and  shortly  beyond  are  two 
or  three  white-throated  sparrows.  They  also  are 
silent.  Perhaps  they  perceive  that  a  red  squirrel 
close  by  is  talking  enough  for  them  and  him- 
self too.  He  says  a  good  many  things,  some  of 
which  I  feel  sure  would  be  highly  interesting  to 
a  competent  listener.  Among  forest  folk,  as 
among  church  folk,  the  rule  is,  "  He  that  hath 
ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear."  As  for  me,  I  can 
only  lament  my  deficiency.  A  solitary  vireo  is 
chattering  sweetly  (with  him  music  is  its  own 
reward),  and  all  the  while,  whoever  else  speaks 
or  keeps  silence,  the  nuthatch  chorus  goes  on. 
Taking  New  England  together,  we  may  safely 
say  that  just  at  present  hundreds  of  thousands, 
yea,  millions  of  anJc-anks  go  up  to  heaven  every 
minute  of  every  day,  from  sunrise  to  sunset. 

I  walk  but  a  few  rods  farther  before  I  am  de- 
lighted by  the  sight  of  four  winter  wrens  in  an 
overturned  tree -top.  In  my  experience  it  is  some- 


IN  THE  MOUNT  LAFAYETTE  FOREST    63 

thing  extremely  out  of  the  common  course  to  see 
so  many  together,  and  —  as  I  did  with  the  two 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  back  —  I  work  upon  this 
quartet's  sensibilities  till  they  fairly  dance  with 
curiosity  and  indignation.  I  wonder  if  they  are 
a  family  group. 

I  bethink  myself  that  I  am  saying  nothing 
about  the  forest  itself.  Its  presence  is  felt  rather 
than  seen,  a  grateful  solemnity ;  but  the  tem- 
perature will  not  suffer  me  to  sit  down  and 
enjoy  it  as  a  Christian  should.  And  just  here  I 
emerge  into  territory  over  which  a  fire  has  swept 
within  a  few  years.  Under  these  dead  trees  I 
get  the  sun  again,  and  can  go  slowly.  Nothing 
in  the  way  of  physical  comfort  is  more  grateful 
than  warmth  after  coolness,  unless  it  be  coolness 
after  warmth.  A  pine  siskin  calls,  the  first  for 
some  weeks,  and  another  hairy  woodpecker  shows 
himself.  Not  a  warbler  has  been  seen  since  I 
entered  the  woods.  Of  the  flycatchers,  too,  — 
olive-sides  and  wood  pewees,  —  which  were  al- 
ways conspicuous  in  this  burning  in  August  and 
early  September,  there  is  neither  sight  nor  sound. 
Their  season  is  done.  Crossbill  notes  lead  me  to 
look  upward,  and  I  see  four  birds  flying  past. 
Restless,  nomadic  souls!  Like  the  saints,  they 
have  "  no  continuing  city." 

Another  half-mile  in  the  leafy  forest,  and  I 


64  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

reach  the  foot  of  Echo  Lake,  where  as  I  pass  a 
cluster  of  balsam  firs  I  am  saluted  by  the  busy, 
hurried  calls  of  golden-crowned  kinglets.  A  wren 
is  here  also,  irritable  as  ever,  and  hearing  a 
chickadee's  voice,  I  whistle  and  chirp  to  him. 
If  I  can  set  him  to  scolding,  all  the  birds  in  the 
neighborhood  will  flock  this  way  to  ascertain 
what  the  trouble  is.  The  device  works  to  a 
charm;  in  half  a  minute  the  excitement  is 
intense.  Nuthatches,  white-throats,  chickadees, 
kinglets,  and  wren,  all  take  a  hand  in  vituperat- 
ing the  intruder,  and  a  youthful  redstart  comes 
from  the  opposite  side  of  the  way  to  satisfy  his 
more  gentle  curiosity.  One  creature,  strangely 
enough,  remains  neutral:  a  red  squirrel,  who 
sits  on  end  at  the  top  of  a  stump  and  gazes  at 
me  in  silence.  He  holds  one  hand  upon  his  heart, 
like  an  opera  singer,  and  looks  and  looks.  "  You 
sentimental  goose !  "  I  say ;  "  who  taught  you 
that  trick?"  and  I  laugh  at  him  and  pass  on. 
This  is  near  the  corner  of  the  old  Notch  road, 
and  as  I  round  it  and  face  the  cold  northerly 
wind  I  button  my  coat  about  me  and  start 
homeward  at  a  quicker  pace. 


ON  BALD  MOUNTAIN 

"  FOUR  inches  of  snow  at  the  Profile  House : " 
such  was  the  word  brought  to  us  at  the  break- 
fast table,  the  driver  of  the  "  stage "  having 
communicated  the  intelligence  as  he  passed  the 
hotel  an  hour  or  two  earlier.  We  were  not 
surprised.  It  rained  in  Franconia  night  before 
last,  and  yesterday,  when  the  clouds  now  and 
then  lifted  a  little,  the  sides  of  the  mountains 
were  seen  to  be  white.  This  morning  (October 
7),  although  even  the  lower  slopes  were  veiled, 
the  day  promised  well,  and  at  the  first  minute  I 
set  out  for  the  Notch. 

It  was  evident  almost  immediately  that  at 
some  time  within  the  last  forty-eight  hours  there 
had  been  a  great  influx  of  migrating  birds. 
Song  sparrows,  white-throated  sparrows,  snow- 
birds, bluebirds,  and  myrtle  warblers  were  in 
extraordinary  force.  Soon  I  began  to  hear  the 
wrennish  calls  of  ruby-crowned  kinglets, — 
which  have  been  very  scarce  hitherto,  —  and 
presently  more  than  one  was  heard  rehearsing 
its  pretty  song.  What  with  bluebird  voices, 
song  sparrows'  warblings  (no  set  tune,  but 


66  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

"  continuous  melody "),  the  cackle  of  robins, 
and  the  croaking  of  rusty  blackbirds,  the  air 
was  loud.  To  these  travelers,  as  to  me,  the 
weather  seemed  to  be  changing  for  the  better, 
though  the  sun  did  not  yet  show  itself,  and  find- 
ing themselves  in  so  delectable  a  valley,  they 
were  in  exuberant  spirits. 

Just  above  the  Profile  House  farm  the  road 
took  me  into  a  flock  of  birds  that  proved  to  be 
the  better  part  of  half  a  mile  in  length.  The 
wayside  hedges  were  literally  in  a  flutter,  snow- 
birds being  the  most  abundant,  I  think,  with 
white-throats  and  myrtle  warblers  not  far 
behind.  Hermit  thrushes,  winter  wrens,  chip- 
ping sparrows,  song  sparrows,  and  ruby-crowns 
were  continually  in  sight,  and  an  unseen  purple 
finch  was  practicing  niggardly,  disconnected, 
vireo-like  phrases,  as  the  manner  of  his  kind  is 
in  the  autumnal  season. 

Then,  when  the  older  forest  was  reached, 
there  came  an  interval  of  silence,  broken  at  last 
by  the  distant,  or  distant-seeming,  voice  of  a 
red-breasted  nuthatch  and  the  cheerful  notes  of 
chickadees.  Soon  two  hermits  showed  them- 
selves, facing  me  on  a  low  perch,  and  lifting 
their  tails  solemnly  in  response  to  my  chirping ; 
and  not  far  away  were  a  winter  wren  or  two, 
and  a  flock  of  white-throats  and  snowbirds.  I 


ON  BALD  MOUNTAIN  67 

had  never  seen  the  dear  old  road  birdier,  even 
in  May,  though  of  course  I  had  often  seen  the 
number  of  species  very  much  larger. 

At  the  height  of  land  I  came  upon  the  first 
snow,  a  ragged  fringe  left  on  the  shady  side  of 
the  way.  I  made  a  snowball,  for  the  sake  of 
doing  it  (or,  as  I  said  to  myself,  suiting  the  boy- 
ish act  with  a  boyish  word,  "  for  greens  "),  and 
decided  all  at  once  not  to  go  down  into  the 
Notch,  but  up  to  the  top  of  Bald  Mountain. 
From  that  point,  if  the  sky  cleared,  as  I  felt 
hopeful  it  would,  there  would  be  sights  worth 
remembering. 

The  mountain  is  only  a  little  one,  but  it  is 
steep  enough — the  upper  half,  at  all  events  — 
to  give  the  eager  pedestrian  a  puff  for  his 
money.  For  myself,  I  had  time  to  spare,  and, 
fortunately  or  unfortunately,  had  been  over  the 
path  too  often  to  be  subject  to  the  state  of 
mind  (I  know  it  well)  which  we  may  charac- 
terize as  climbers'  impatience.  Unless  something 
unforeseen  should  happen,  the  summit  would 
wait  for  me.  Halfway  up,  also,  a  flock  of  blue 
jays,  five  or  six  at  least,  who  were  holding  a 
long  and  mysterious  confabulation  close  by  the 
path,  afforded  me  a  comfortable  breathing  spell. 
For  a  moment  I  suspected  the  presence  of  an 
owl,  against  whom  the  rascals  were  plotting  mis- 


68  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

chief ;  but  their  voices  were  much  of  the  time 
too  soft,  too  intimate-sounding,  too  lacking  in 
belligerency.  Some  of  the  birds  might  even  have 
been  communing  with  themselves.  Their  whole 
behavior  had  an  air  of  preternatural  gravity  and 
cunning,  and  their  remarks,  whatever  the  pur- 
port of  them,  were  in  the  highest  degree  varied. 
One  fellow  was  a  masterly  performer  upon  the 
bones  (jay  scholars  will  understand  what  I  mean, 
and  I  should  despair  of  explaining  myself  in  a 
few  words  to  any  one  else),  while  another  fur- 
nished me  with  a  genuine  surprise  by  whistling 
again  and  again  in  the  manner  of  a  red-tailed 
hawk. 

Well,  the  conspirators  dispersed,  the  solitary 
climber  pocketed  his  curiosity,  and  in  a  few 
minutes  longer  his  feet  were  at  the  top.  The 
rocky  cone  of  Lafayette  was  still  densely 
capped,  but  under  the  fringed  edges  of  the 
cloud  there  was  plenty  of  snow  in  sight.  All  the 
upper  slopes  of  Kinsman,  Cannon,  and  Lafay- 
ette were  covered  with  it,  except  that  the  de- 
ciduous trees  (broad  patches  of  yellow)  stood 
bare.  Apparently  the  snow  had  stuck  only  upon 
the  evergreens,  and  the  effect  at  this  distance 
was  very  striking,  the  white  over  the  green  pro- 
ducing a  beautiful  gray.  I  could  never  have 
imagined  it.  The  hotel  and  its  cottages,  nestled 


ON  BALD  MOUNTAIN  69 

between  the  mountains,  all  had  white  roofs,  but 
the  landscape  as  a  whole  was  anything  but  win- 
try. Everywhere  below  me  the  great  forest  still 
showed  an  abundance  of  bright  hues,  —  red,  yel- 
low, and  russet,  —  a  piece  of  glorious  pageantry, 
though  many  shades  less  brilliant  than  I  had 
seen  it  two  days  before. 

So  I  am  saying  to  myself  when  suddenly  I 
look  upward,  and  behold,  the  cap  is  lifted  from 
Lafayette,  and  the  mountain-top  is  clear  white, 
shining  in  the  sunlight  against  the  blue  sky ;  a 
vision,  it  seems ;  something  not  of  this  world ; 
splendor  immaculate,  unearthly,  unspeakable. 
I  feel  like  shouting,  or  tell  myself  that  I  do; 
but  for  some  reason  I  keep  silence.  Clouds 
still  hang  about  the  mountains,  their  shapes 
altering  from  glory  to  glory  with  every  minute. 
Now  a  band  lies  clean  across  Lafayette,  immedi- 
ately below  the  cone,  detaching  the  white  mass 
from  everything  underneath,  and  leaving  it,  as 
it  were,  floating  in  the  air. 

A  sharp-shinned  hawk  sails  past  me,  nut- 
hatches call  from  the  valley  woods,  a  snowbird 
perches  on  a  dwarf  spruce  at  my  elbow,  a  red 
squirrel  breaks  into  sudden  spluttering,  and  then, 
with  hands  uplifted,  sits  silent  and  motionless. 
I  mention  these  details,  but  they  are  nothing. 
What  I  really  see  and  feel  is  the  world  I  am  liv- 


70  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

ing  in :  the  sunshine,  the  stillness,  the  temper- 
ate airs,  the  bright  encircling  forest,  in  which 
my  little  hilltop  is  cradled,  and  the  white  peak 
yonder  in  the  sky.  The  snow  lends  it  lightness, 
airiness,  buoyancy.  As  I  said  just  now,  it  seems 
almost  to  float  in  the  ether. 

I  remained  with  this  beauty  for  an  hour,  di- 
vided at  the  last  between  the  luminous,  snowy 
peak  above  me  and  the  soft  —  ineffably  soft  — 
world  of  leafy  tree-tops  below.  Then,  as  I  had 
done  only  day  before  yesterday,  I  bade  the  place 
good-by.  Probably  I  should  not  come  this  way 
again  till  next  summer,  at  the  soonest.  Good-by, 
old  mountain.  Good-by,  old  woods.  No  doubt 
you  have  many  worthier  lovers,  but  let  me  be 
counted  as  one  of  the  faithful. 

I  was  still  on  the  cone,  making  my  way  down- 
ward, when  a  grouse  drummed  and  in  a  minute 
or  two  repeated  himself.  The  sound  struck  me 
as  curiously  wanting  in  resonance,  as  if  the  log 
were  water-soaked  (though  I  do  not  believe  he 
was  striking  one),  or  his  breast  not  fully  inflated. 
Perhaps  he  was  a  young  fellow,  a  new  hand  with 
the  drumsticks,  and  so  excusable.  Certainly  the 
difficulty  lay  not  in  the  matter  of  distance,  for 
between  two  of  the  performances  I  turned  a  sharp 
corner,  effectively  triangulating  the  bird,  and  it 
was  impossible  that  he  should  be  more  than  a  few 


ON  BALD  MOUNTAIN  71 

yards  away.  On  all  sides  the  little  nuthatches 
were  calling  to  each  other  in  their  quaint  childish 
treble.  I  love  to  hear  them,  and  the  goldcrests 
also ;  but  here,  as  on  the  heights  above,  the  birds 
were  less  than  the  forest.  I  was  in  a  susceptible 
mood,  I  suppose.  The  mere  sight  of  the  tall, 
straight  trunks,  with  the  lights  and  shadows  on 
them,  gave  me  a  pleasure  indescribable.  Though 
the  friend  who  had  been  my  walking  companion 
for  a  week  past  (and  no  man  could  wish  a  better 
one)  is  sure  to  read  this  column,  I  cannot  refrain 
from  saying  that  solitariness  has  its  merciful  al- 
leviations. I  was  no  longer  tempted  to  babble, 
and  the  wise  old  trees  took  their  turn  at  talking. 
If  I  could  only  repeat  what  they  said ! 


BIRDS  AND  BEIGHT  LEAVES 

AFTER  the  red  maple  trees  and  the  yellow  birches 
are  mostly  bare,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  sugar 
groves  have  passed  the  zenith  of  their  brilliancy, 
then  the  poplars  come  to  the  rescue.  The  hills  are 
all  at  once  bright  again  with  a  second  crop  of 
color,  an  aftermath  of  splendid  sun-bright  yellow. 
I  knew  nothing  about  this  beforehand,  and  am 
delighted  over  the  discovery.  From  my  Franconia 
window  I  am  looking  at  as  pretty  an  autumnal 
wood  as  any  man  need  wish  to  see,  and  it  is  a 
wood  the  seasonable  glories  of  which  were  ended, 
I  thought,  more  than  a  week  ago.  As  I  look  at 
it  I  feel  sorry  for  my  last  week's  companion,  who 
went  home  too  soon.  Since  his  departure  the 
days  have  been  outdoing  one  another  in  the  soft- 
ness of  their  airs  and  the  beauty  of  their  lights. 
Mother  Earth  has  been  in  her  most  amiable 
mood.  Nothing  is  too  good  for  her  children.  I 
have  never  seen  fairer  weather  ;  though  some, 
I  dare  say,  might  criticise  it  as  a  few  degrees  too 
warm.  It  is  hard,  I  admit,  for  a  walker  to  keep 
a  coat  on  his  back,  far  along  as  the  season  is  get- 
ting, when  the  sun  wrestles  with  him  for  it. 


BIRDS  AND  BRIGHT  LEAVES  73 

An  interesting  thing  to  me  has  been  the  tardy 
brightening  of  individual  maple  trees.  It  is  one 
more  manifestation,  I  assume,  of  Nature's  gift 
of  versatility,  her  faculty  of  variation,  to  which, 
all  but  universal  as  it  is,  scientific  men  attribute 
so  much  potency  in  the  evolving  of  so-called  spe- 
cies. What  I  notice  just  now  is  that,  as  some 
bushes  and  trees  mature  their  fruit  later  than 
others  of  the  same  kind,  living  apparently  under 
the  same  conditions,  so  some  maple  trees  are  a 
week  or  two  behind  their  immediate  neighbors  in 
ripening  their  foliage.  I  have  passed  within  a 
day  or  two  both  sugar  maples  and  red  maples 
that  were  just  donning  their  gay  robes.  Well 
done,  I  am  moved  to  say,  as  my  eye  lights  on 
them.  They  and  the  poplars,  together  with  cer- 
tain extensive  maple  groves  on  the  higher  levels, 
still  keep  the  world  arrayed  in  a  really  barbaric 
splendor.  Two  weeks  ago  I  should  have  prophe- 
sied that  before  this  time  the  landscape  would  be 
stripped  for  winter ;  and  so  it  would  have  been, 
perhaps,  if  a  cold  storm  had  supervened  instead 
of  this  period  of  summery  brightness  and  calm. 
Great  is  weather.  There  is  nothing  like  it.  It 
makes  a  man  —  and  a  tree,  too,  for  aught  I  know 
—  glad  to  be  alive. 

That  it  makes  the  birds  happy  is  beyond  dis- 
pute. You  can  see  it  with  half  an  eye.  Many  of 


74  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

them  are  gone,  it  is  true,  but  many  others  are 
left ;  and  wherever  you  take  your  walk  you  may 
have  joy  of  them.  You  will  need  to  be  blind  and 
deaf,  or  of  a  hopelessly  sour  temper,  not  to  catch 
a  little  of  their  cheeriness.  Three  days  ago  (it 
was  an  anniversary  with  me,  and  I  was  early 
abroad)  I  went  into  the  kitchen  garden  before 
breakfast,  as  I  have  been  doing  frequently  of 
late,  to  see  what  birds  might  be  there.  For  a 
month  and  more,  as  the  coarse  grasses  and  weeds 
have  ripened  their  crop  (the  garden,  luckily  for 
me,  having  been  allowed  to  go  untended),  the 
place  has  been  a  favorite  resort  of  sparrows. 
There  I  saw  the  Lincoln  finches  in  their  time,  — 
on  September  5  and  subsequently,  —  and  there 
for  a  fortnight  past  I  have  always  been  able  to 
begin  the  day  with  a  few  white-crowns. 

Well,  on  the  morning  in  question  one  of  the 
first  things  I  heard  was  a  brief,  uncharacteristic, 
autumnal-sounding  ditty  which,  being  too  short 
for  a  song  sparrow's  work,  I  at  once  credited  to 
a  white-crown ;  and,  to  be  sure>  when  I  looked 
that  way,  there  the  bird  stood  on  a  top  stone  of 
the  wall,  a  young  fellow,  not  yet  "  crowned," 
practicing  his  first  musical  exercises.  The  morn- 
ing was  cool,  —  the  ground  had  stiffened  over- 
night, —  and  every  time  he  opened  his  mouth  to 
sing,  a  tiny  cloud  of  vapor  could  be  seen  rising 


BIRDS  AND  BRIGHT  LEAVES  75 

from  it.  It  was  visible  music.  Again  and  again 
I  watched  him.  The  dear  little  chorister !  No- 
body's birthday  was  ever  more  prettily  honored. 
He  "sang  to  my  eye  "  indeed — in  a  daintily 
literal  sense  such  as  the  poet  never  thought  of.  I 
wonder  if  any  one,  anywhere,  ever  saw  and  heard 
the  like. 

The  white-crowns  have  been  surprisingly  musi- 
cal (the  weather,  no  doubt,  being  a  provocation), 
but  I  have  not  once  heard  their  spring  song,  or 
anything  which  to  my  ear — none  too  well  accus- 
tomed to  it  —  has  seemed  to  bear  any  relation 
thereto.  Song  sparrows,  on  the  other  hand,  while 
mostly  contenting  themselves  with  incoherent, 
sotto^voce  twitterings,  have  now  and  then  —  al- 
most daily,  I  think  —  varied  the  programme 
with  more  or  less  successful  attempts  at  a  fuller- 
voiced  and  more  formal  melody.  As  for  the  ves- 
per sparrows,  they  have  mainly  kept  silence,  but 
on  one  or  two  bright  mornings  have  sung  as 
sweetly  as  ever  they  do  in  May.  Indeed,  I  might 
truthfully  say  more  than  that ;  for  at  this  season, 
when  all  bright  things  are  taking  leave,  a  strain 
of  wild  music  is  more  grateful  to  the  ear  than  by 
any  possibility  it  can  be  when  every  newly  green 
bush  is  part  of  the  universal  choir  gallery. 

To  us  who  have  been  in  the  habit  of  coming  to 
this  valley  in  bright-leaf  time  nothing  is  more 


76  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

characteristic,  as  nothing  is  more  welcome,  than 
the  continual  familiar  presence  of  bluebirds. 
This  year,  because  I  have  stayed  later  than  usual, 
it  may  be,  they  have  seemed  uncommonly  abun- 
dant. Their  voices  are  sure  to  be  among  the  first 
to  be  heard  as  I  step  out  of  the  door  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  wherever  I  walk  —  in  the  open  country 
—  I  find  myself  surrounded  at  frequent  intervals 
by  a  larger  or  smaller  flock.  Two  days  ago  I 
counted  forty  in  sight  at  once ;  and  a  bunch  of 
forty  bluebirds  —  well,  there  may  be  pleasanter 
sights  for  a  bird-lover  (a  flock  of  sixty,  for  exam- 
ple), but  it  is  a  sight  to  raise  low  spirits,  espe- 
cially for  a  man  who  remembers  the  time  —  after 
a  cruel  winter  —  when  the  vision  of  a  single  bird 
was  accepted  by  all  of  us  as  an  event  to  talk  about. 
Myrtle  warblers  (yellow-rumps)  are  still  more 
numerous,  and  if  a  bluebird  quits  a  perch  and 
takes  wing  it  is  almost  an  even  chance  that  a 
yellow-rump,  who  has  been  sitting  near  at  hand, 
waiting  for  this  to  happen,  will  be  seen  dashing 
in  pursuit.  You  may  go  down  the  village  street 
and  watch  the  trick  repeated  half  a  dozen  times 
within  half  a  mile.  To  my  walking  companion 
and  myself  the  sight  has  come  to  be  part  of  a 
Franconia  autumn.  If  you  are  pretty  close  to  the 
birds  you  may  hear  a  bill  snapping  (the  warbler's, 
I  think),  as  if  in  anger,  but  on  the  whole  I  am 


BIRDS  AND  BRIGHT  LEAVES  77 

inclined  to  believe  that  the  thing  is  no  more  than 
an  innocent,  though  one-sided,  game  of  tag.  All 
young  creatures  must  have  something  to  play 
with,  somebody  to  make  game  of.  So  it  is  with 
yellow-rumps,  I  dare  say ;  but  why  should  they 
so  universally  pitch  upon  the  inoffensive  bluebird, 
I  should  like  to  know.  It  is  to  be  added,  however, 
to  make  the  story  truthful,  that  if  there  are  no 
bluebirds  handy,  the  warblers  take  it  out  by  a 
free  chasing  of  each  other.  To  watch  them,  one 
would  think  that  life,  by  their  apprehension  of 
it,  were  all  a  holiday. 

And  while  I  am  talking  of  bluebirds  I  ought  to 
mention  their  habit  of  hanging  about  bird  boxes 
in  these  last  days  of  their  Northern  season.  Only 
this  forenoon,  since  the  foregoing  paragraphs 
were  written,  I  passed  a  box  perched  upon  a 
pole  beside  a  house,  and  at  least  six  bluebirds 
were  sitting  upon  its  platform,  or  investigating 
its  different  apartments.  Sometimes  a  pair  (so 
they  looked,  one  bright  colored,  the  other  dull) 
sat  side  by  side  before  a  door,  like  married  lovers. 
Sometimes  one  would  go  inside,  sometimes  both, 
while  out  of  the  next  door  another  bird  would  be 
peeping.  The  box  was  very  unlikely  to  have 
been  their  home;  the  countryside  is  overrun 
with  bluebirds,  too  many  by  half  to  have  sum- 
mered hereabout ;  but  evidently  the  sight  of  it 


78  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

had  suggested  family  pleasures.  Perhaps  they 
were  living  over  the  past,  perhaps  forecasting 
the  future.  Bluebirds  have  their  full  share  of 
sentiment,  or  both  voice  and  behavior  are  rank 
deceivers.  Concerning  this  aspect  of  the  case, 
however,  the  frivolous  yellow-rumps  cared  not  a 
farthing.  They  sat  in  a  small  apple  tree  conven- 
iently near,  and  as  often  as  a  bluebird  ventured 
upon  the  wing,  one  or  two  of  them  started  in- 
stantly in  pursuit.  If  he  alighted  upon  a  fence 
post,  down  they  dropped  upon  the  next  rail  and 
waited  for  him  to  make  another  sally.  Once  I 
heard  a  bluebird  utter  a  pretty  sharp  note  of 
remonstrance,  but  that,  we  may  guess,  only  made 
the  fun  the  greater.  Birds  will  be  birds. 

My  morning  stroll  (it  is  October  13,  my  last 
day  in  Franconia)  showed  me,  in  addition  to 
the  birds  already  named,  one  lonesome-mannered 
hermit  thrush,  a  few  robins,  two  or  three  ruby- 
crowned  kinglets,  one  of  them  running  over  with 
his  musical  twittity,  twittity^  twittity,  a  single 
yellow  palm  warbler  (this  and  the  myrtle  have 
been  the  only  warblers  of  the  month),  a  red  cross- 
bill, going  somewhere,  as  usual,  and  leaving  word 
behind  him  as  he  went,  a  small  flock  of  pine  sis- 
kins, a  strangely  few  song  sparrows,  one  vesper 
sparrow,  one  white-crown,  a  multitude  of  snow- 
birds, a  purple  finch  or  two,  a  goldfinch,  and  a 


BIRDS  AND  BRIGHT  LEAVES  79 

grouse,  with  the  inevitable  crows,  jays,  chickadees, 
and  red-breasted  nuthatches.  Had  my  walk  been 
longer  and  into  a  more  varied  country,  I  should 
have  found  gold-crested  kinglets,  winter  wrens, 
brown  creepers,  titlarks  (perhaps),  white-throated 
sparrows,  field  sparrows,  chippers,  tree  sparrows 
(probably),  and  three  or  four  kinds  of  wood- 
peckers. 

And  speaking  of  woodpeckers,  I  must  allow 
myself  to  boast  that  within  the  last  few  days  I 
have  had  exceptional  luck  with  the  big  fellow  of 
them  all,  known  in  books  as  the  pileated.  On 
the  9th  I  saw  one  and  heard  the  halloo  of  an- 
other, and  on  the  llth  I  saw  two  (together)  and 
heard  a  third.  One  of  those  seen  on  the  llth 
shouted  at  full  length,  and  at  the  top  of  his  voice 
while  flying. 

The  pileated  woodpecker  is  a  splendid  bird. 
A  pity  he  cannot  find  himself  at  home  in  our 
Massachusetts  country.  To  see  him  here  in  New 
Hampshire  one  might  imagine  that  he  belonged 
with  the  mountains  and  would  be  homesick  in 
other  company ;  but  if  you  would  see  him  of  tener 
than  anywhere  else,  you  may  go  to  a  land  where 
there  is  scarcely  so  much  as  a  hillock  —  to  the 
peninsula  of  Florida.  There  or  here,  he  is  a  great 
bird.  The  brightest  maple  leaf  that  ever  took 
color  was  not  so  bright  as  his  crest. 


FLORIDA 


FIKST  IMPRESSIONS   OF  MIAMI 

IT  is  Sunday,  the  19th  of  January.  A  week  ago 
I  was  sitting  before  a  fire,  watching  the  snow 
fall  outside,  in  winter-bound  Massachusetts. 
This  forenoon  I  am  reclining  in  the  shade  of  a 
cocoanut  palm,  looking  across  the  smooth  blue 
waters  of  Biscayne  Bay  to  a  line  of  woods,  I 
know  not  how  many  miles  distant,  broken  in  the 
midst  by  a  narrow  cut  or  inlet  (Norris  Cut,  a 
passer-by  tells  me  it  is  called),  through  which  is 
to  be  seen  the  open  Atlantic.  The  air  is  motion- 
less, the  sky  cloudless,  the  temperature  ideal. 
"  This  is  the  day  the  Lord  hath  made,"  I  repeat 
to  myself.  He  has  seldom  done  better. 

I  left  Boston  Monday  morning,  spent  that 
night  and  the  next  day  in  "Washington,  slept  in 
St.  Augustine  Wednesday  night,  and  on  Thurs- 
day took  the  long,  all-day  ride  down  the  east 
coast  of  Florida,  past  miles  on  miles  of  orange 
groves  and  pineapple  plantations,  to  the  termi- 
nus of  the  railroad,  the  new  and  flourishing  city 
of  Miami. 

My  visit,  it  must  be  owned,  began  rather  in- 
auspiciously.  It  was  nobody's  fault,  of  course, 


84  FLORIDA 

but  the  "  magic  city  "  did  not  put  its  best  foot 
forward.  Friday  morning  the  mercury  stood  at 
forty-five,  and  although  the  day  was  abundantly 
warm  out  of  doors,  —  so  warm  that  a  walker  nat- 
urally took  off  his  coat,  —  an  oil  stove  proved  a 
comfort  at  nightfall.  In  short,  the  day  was  ex- 
actly like  a  White  Mountain  day  in  late  Septem- 
ber, hot  in  the  middle  and  cool  at  both  ends. 
Yesterday,  however,  was  a  piece  of  Massachusetts 
June,  while  this  morning  is  so  perfect  that  every 
one,  visitor  or  resident,  passes  comments  upon 
it.  Perfection  of  any  kind  is  a  rare  and  precious 
thing,  —  in  this  world,  at  least,  —  and  though  it 
be  merely  a  bit  of  weather,  it  should  never  go 
unspoken  of.  So  I  say  to  myself  as  I  lie  in  the 
shade,  and  look  and  breathe. 

In  truth,  I  can  hardly  feel  it  credible  that  I 
was  in  the  midst  of  snowstorms  less  than  a  week 
ago.  For  a  long  two  days  winter  has  seemed 
a  thing  utterly  past  and  forgotten.  Only  now 
and  then  it  comes  upon  me,  with  the  shock  of 
unexpected  news,  that  this  is  not  summer,  but 
January. 

The  bay,  for  some  reason  to  me  unknown,  is 
almost  without  birds.  The  only  one  just  now  in 
sight  is  a  cormorant  pretty  far  offshore,  diving 
and  swimming  by  turns.  I  imagine  him  to  be  a 
loon  till  suddenly  he  takes  wing,  with  outstretched 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  MIAMI          85 

neck,  and  after  a  long  flight  comes  to  rest,  not 
in  the  water,  but  at  the  top  of  a  stake.  Some- 
where behind  me  a  flicker  is  shouting  as  in 
springtime,  and  on  one  side  a  mockingbird  is 
calling  ("  smacking  "  is  the  word  that  comes  of 
itself  to  my  pencil),  and  a  blue-gray  gnatcatcher 
utters  now  and  then  a  fine,  thread-like  ejaculation. 
The  stillness  is  really  a  relief,  even  to  my  or- 
nithological ears;  for  though  they  had  been 
starved  for  two  or  three  months  in  Massachu- 
setts, they  have  been  so  dinned  with  bird  voices 
for  the  last  two  days  that  a  brief  period  of  si- 
lence is  grateful.  The  centre  of  the  town,  where 
I  have  taken  up  my  abode,  literally  swarms  with 
fish  crows  and  boat-tailed  grackles,  every  one 
trying,  as  it  seems,  to  outdo  its  rivals  in  noisi- 
ness. I  remember  the  day,  eight  or  nine  years 
ago,  when  in  the  flatwoods  of  New  Smyrna  I 
spent  an  hour  of  almost  painful  excitement  in 
taking  observations  upon  the  first  boat-tail  I  had 
ever  seen.  It  would  have  been  hard  at  that 
moment  for  me  to  imagine  that  so  clever  and  in- 
teresting a  bird  could  ever  become  a  nuisance. 
Fortunately,  both  crow  and  grackle  retire  to 
roost  early  and  are  comparatively  late  risers; 
otherwise  the  people  of  Miami  might  be  driven 
to  violent  measures,  as  against  a  plague.  As 
things  are,  the  birds  have  no  fears.  They  alight 


86  FLORIDA 

in  the  shade  trees  before  the  windows,  or  gather 
about  the  kitchen  door,  crows  and  blackbirds 
alike  (and  the  male  blackbirds,  with  their  over- 
grown tails,  are  almost  or  quite  as  large  as  the 
crows),  as  fearless  as  so  many  English  sparrows. 

After  them  the  abundant  birds  hereabout,  so 
far  as  I  have  yet  discovered,  are  buzzards,  car- 
rion crows  (black  vultures),  blue  jays,  catbirds 
(which  I  have  never  seen  half  so  plentiful),  palm 
warblers,  myrtle  warblers,  and  blue-gray  gnat- 
catchers.  Less  numerous,  but  still  decidedly  com- 
mon, are  flickers,  red-bellied  woodpeckers,  mock- 
ingbirds, Florida  yellow-throats,  hummingbirds, 
ground  doves,  and  phoebes.  Day  before  yesterday 
a  long  procession  of  tree  swallows  straggled  past 
me  as  I  wandered  along  the  bay  shore,  and  in  the 
same  place  a  flock  of  masculine  red-winged  black- 
birds were  holding  a  vociferous  mid-winter  con- 
vention in  a  thicket  of  tall  reeds.  White-eyed 
vireos  are  well  distributed,  and  sing  as  saucily 
as  if  the  month  were  May  instead  of  January. 
Solitary  vireos  are  present  likewise,  but  I  have 
seen  only  one,  and  he  was  not  yet  in  tune. 

Out  in  the  pine  lands  I  came  upon  a  single 
group  of  pine  warblers  and  half  a  dozen  blue- 
birds, both  singing  freely.  What  a  voice  the 
bluebird  has  !  It  does  a  Yankee's  heart  good  to 
hear  it.  I  have  yet  to  see  a  robin  or  a  chickadee. 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  MIAMI          87 

All  in  all,  notwithstanding  the  woods  are  alive 
with  wings,  there  is  surprisingly  little  music. 
The  season  of  song  is  not  yet  come.  Phoebes,  for 
some  reason,  form  a  bright  exception  to  the  rule, 
and  now  and  then  a  cardinal  grosbeak  whistles 
with  a  sweetness  that  beggars  words.  Twice,  I 
think,  I  have  heard  a  distant  mockingbird  sing- 
ing, and  yesterday,  in  front  of  the  hotel,  I  stopped 
to  watch  a  pair  that  seemed  to  be  in  what  I 
should  call  a  decidedly  lyrical  mood,  though  they 
were  silent  as  dead  men.  They  stood  on  the 
pavement  a  foot  or  so  apart,  and  took  turns  in  a 
very  original  and  pretty  kind  of  dance.  One  and 
then  the  other  suddenly  hopped  straight  upward 
for  an  inch  or  two,  both  feet  at  once.  Between 
whiles  they  stood  motionless,  or  sometimes  one 
(always  the  same)  moved  a  little  away  from  its 
partner.  Plainly  they  were  much  in  earnest,  and 
without  question  the  ceremony,  simple,  and  al- 
most laughable,  as  it  looked,  had  some  deep  and 
perfectly  understood  significance.  Bitualism  is 
not  confined  to  churches.  Everywhere  the  heart 
speaks  by  attitude  and  gesticulation. 

A  noble  concert  it  will  be  when  all  these  thou- 
sands of  song  birds  recover  their  voices.  May  I 
be  here  to  enjoy  it.  For  the  present  I  am  con- 
tented to  wait.  It  is  sufficient  just  now  to  be  in 
so  strange  a  land  in  so  lovely  a  season,  with 


88  FLORIDA 

acres  of  morning-glories  and  moon-flowers  all 
about,  roses  and  marigolds  in  the  gardens,  birds 
in  every  bush  (not  an  English  sparrow  among 
them),  airs  gratefully  cool  from  the  sea,  and 
bright  summer  weather.  For  a  winter-killed 
Yankee,  this  is  what  old  Omar  would  have 
called  "Paradise  enow." 


A  FKOSTY  MOENING 

THEEE  is  nothing  like  weather.  It  is  man's  com- 
fort and  his  misery ;  more  important  still,  per- 
haps, it  is  his  prosperity  and  his  ruin.  Indeed, 
it  has  almost  divine  prerogatives.  It  wounds  and 
it  heals ;  it  kills  and  it  makes  alive.  And  this, 
which  in  good  degree  is  true  everywhere,  is  espe- 
cially true  in  a  country  like  southern  Florida, 
the  Mecca  at  once  of  pleasure-seeking  winter 
vacationers,  health-seeking  tourists,  and  liveli- 
hood-seeking settlers.  For  all  these,  Florida  is 
what  it  is  because  of  its  climate,  that  is  to  say, 
its  weather.  Speak  with  whom  you  will,  weather 
is  the  topic  that  naturally  comes  uppermost. 

Yesterday  (January  22)  was  one  of  the  most 
delightful  days  imaginable ;  for  a  pedestrian,  I 
mean  to  say.  I  know  an  insect  collector,  a  gentle 
soul,  little  used  to  complaining  against  the  order 
of  the  world,  who  pronounced  it  "  horrid."  For 
the  successful  prosecution  of  her  industry  there 
lacked  a  few  degrees  of  warmth.  Florida  insects, 
it  appears,  are  much  less  hardy  than  their  North- 
ern cousins,  keeping  indoors,  and  so  out  of  the 
net,  in  temperature  such  as  a  Yankee  butterfly 


90  FLORIDA 

or  beetle,  thicker-skinned  or  thicker-blooded, 
would  scorn  to  be  afraid  of.  But  if  yesterday 
was  perfect,  to-day,  by  my  reckoning,  at  least, 
has  been  finer  still  —  perfection  heaped  upon 
perfection.  Yet  every  one  hereabout  is  more  or 
less  unhappy,  and  with  more  or  less  reason.  In 
the  night  between  these  two  perfect  days  an  air 
from  the  North  descended  suddenly  upon  us,  and 
the  temperature  took  an  alarming  drop,  some  say 
to  38°,  some  to  31°  — a  drop  which  meant  dis- 
comfort to  all,  and  disaster  to  many.  When  I 
put  my  head  out  of  doors  at  seven  o'clock  this 
morning,  on  my  way  to  the  post  office,  I  was 
startled.  My  first  thought  was  to  run  back  for 
an  overcoat.  Instead  of  that  I  put  on  steam. 

Breakfast  over,  I  betook  myself  to  the  pine 
lands,  my  rule  being  to  improve  cool  days  in 
that  sunny  region,  leaving  the  shady  hammock 
woods  for  hotter  weather.  It  was  cold  enough 
for  overcoat  and  mittens.  In  Massachusetts,  with 
anything  like  the  same  temperature,  I  should 
certainly  have  worn  them.  Here,  however,  it  was 
not  so  plain  a  case.  I  was  to  be  on  foot  till  noon, 
and  I  felt  sure  that  long  before  that  time  the 
lightest  outer  garment  would  become  intolerable. 
So  I  buttoned  my  one  coat  tightly  about  me, 
stuffed  my  hands  into  my  pockets,  and  hastened 
my  steps.  For  a  mile,  perhaps,  I  kept  up  the 


A  FROSTY  MORNING  91 

pace.  By  that  time  the  sun  had  begun  to  make 
itself  felt.  At  the  end  of  the  second  mile  the 
temperature  was  nothing  less  than  summer-like, 
and  before  the  third  mile  was  finished  my  coat 
was  on  my  arm ;  and  as  I  came  down  one  of  the 
city  streets,  on  my  return  at  noon,  and  met  two 
Seminole  Indians  walking  abroad  dressed,  after 
their  airy  fashion,  in  nothing  but  waistcoat  and 
shirt,  the  sight  of  their  comfortable  uncivilized 
legs  was  calculated  to  make  a  perspiring  man 
envious. 

By  nine  o'clock,  indeed,  the  weather  was 
superb  ;  but  presently  I  came  to  an  opening  in 
the  woods.  Here  was  a  field  of  tomato  plants  in 
front  of  a  new,  unpainted  house.  Some  recent 
settler  had  cleared  a  piece  of  ground  and  estab- 
lished a  home  in  this  land  of  perpetual  summer. 
And  to  support  himself  and  his  family  he  had 
"  gone  into  early  tomatoes."  So  much  was  to  be 
seen  at  a  glance.  And  yes,  there  stood  the  man 
himself  in  the  midst  of  his  plantation.  I  went 
near  and  accosted  him,  expressing  my  hope  that 
the  frost  (for  by  this  time  it  was  plain  there  had 
been  one)  had  not  damaged  his  crop.  He  had 
been  badly  frightened  in  the  night,  he  confessed, 
but  thought  he  had  mostly  escaped  harm.  "I 
was  glad,"  he  said,  dwelling  upon  the  verb  with 
a  pleasant  foreign  accent,  "  when  I  saw  the  ther- 


92  FLORIDA 

mometer  "  (pronounced  etymologieally,  with  the 
accent  on  the  penult).  I  fear  he  was  worse  hit 
than  he  knew.  At  all  events  there  were  many 
acres  of  wilting  tomato  plants  only  a  mile  away 
on  the  same  road.  One  man,  whom  I  saw  look- 
ing over  his  field,  was  calling  the  attention  of 
a  solicitous  neighbor  to  the  fact  that  a  certain 
part  of  the  plantation  had  fared  better  than  the 
rest.  A  few  burning  stumps  had  happened  to  be 
left  smouldering  on  one  edge  of  the  field  over- 
night, and  the  wind  had  drifted  a  light  blanket 
of  smoke  across  that  corner. 

But  even  in  unprotected  gardens  the  different 
parts  had  not  fared  alike.  Here  the  tender  plants 
were  wilting  as  the  sun  shone  on  them,  and  yon- 
der, only  five  or  ten  yards  away,  there  was  no 
symptom  of  blight.  So  true  is  it  of  tomato  vines, 
as  of  nobler  creations,  that  one  shall  be  taken  and 
the  other  left.  The  frost  is  like  the  wind,  it  striketh 
where  it  listeth,  and  thou  seest  the  effect  thereof ; 
and  the  poor  man  suffereth  with  the  rich. 

Such  are  the  cruel  uncertainties  of  truck  farm- 
ing in  this  sub-tropical  region,  far  down  toward 
the  very  tip  of  Florida.  Like  the  speculator  in 
copper  or  in  oil,  the  farmer  goes  to  bed  rich  and 
gets  up  poor.  But,  like  the  dabbler  in  "  shares," 
the  farmer  is  not  easily  discouraged.  Though  he 
has  moved  from  one  point  to  another,  farther 


A  FROSTY  MORNING  93 

and  farther  down  the  peninsula,  the  frost  pursu- 
ing him,  he  will  still  try  again.  There  is  one 
thing  to  be  depended  upon  (let  us  be  thankful 
to  say  it)  —  a  sanguine  man's  hope. 

So  much  for  tillers  of  the  soil.  For  the  rest 
of  us,  mere  idlers  and  wayfarers,  concerned  only 
with  questions  of  sight-seeing  and  momentary 
comfort,  a  day  like  the  present  needs  no  better- 
ing. My  own  course,  as  I  have  said,  lay  through 
the  pine  woods  —  sunny,  spacious,  not  in  the 
least  like  anything  that  a  New  Englander  would 
call  a  forest.  At  short  intervals  the  road,  white 
and  hard,  ran  past  a  small  clearing,  generally 
with  a  house  upon  it.  Here  would  be  orange 
trees,  mango  trees  (just  now  in  bloom),  splendid 
hibiscus  shrubs,  pineapples,  perhaps,  with  other 
novelties  pleasant  for  Northern  eyes  to  look 
upon,  or,  quite  as  likely,  a  field  of  tomatoes  (the 
fruit  nearly  grown),  or  a  sweet-potato  patch. 

Near  one  of  the  houses  the  loud  cries  of  some 
strange  bird  troubled  my  curiosity.  The  opera- 
glass  showed  me  nothing,  and  I  was  none  the 
wiser  till  beside  a  second  house  I  heard  the  same 
voice  again.  This  time  I  put  aside  my  scruples 
and  made  a  set  attempt  to  solve  the  mystery.  A 
woman  before  the  door  was  inquisitive  about 
the  stranger,  but  the  stranger  was  still  more  in- 
quisitive about  the  bird ;  and  by  and  by,  on  a 


94:  FLORIDA 

lower  perch  than  I  had  thought,  there  the  fellow 
stood  at  the  top  of  a  shrub,  directly  before  my 
eyes,  a  Florida  jay.  It  was  nine  years  since  I 
had  seen  a  bird  of  his  kind,  and  the  sight  was 
welcome  accordingly.  Perhaps  he  knew  it.  At 
any  rate,  whether  for  my  pleasure  or  his  own, 
he  held  his  ground  and  kept  up  his  harsh, 
shrikely  vociferations. 

The  Florida  jay  (a  crestless  bird,  not  at  all 
the  same  as  the  Florida  blue  jay,  which  abounds 
everywhere  and  is  everywhere  noisy,  especially 
in  the  villages)  is  strictly  a  bird  of  the  peninsula, 
being  found  nowhere  else  —  a  remarkable  in- 
stance of  extreme  localization.  I  ran  upon  still 
another  individual  before  reaching  the  end  of 
my  jaunt,  —  on  the  outskirts  of  Lemon  City,  — 
and  all  three  were  in  dooryards.  Oak  scrub 
(where  you  may  look  out  for  rattlesnakes)  and 
human  neighborhood,  these,  as  I  read  the  signs, 
are  the  Florida  jay's  desiderata. 

In  general,  as  compared  with  the  hammock 
woods,  the  pine  lands  are  nearly  birdless.  An 
occasional  sparrow  hawk  (another  strangely  trust- 
ful creature,  very  common  in  this  country1),  an 

1  One  was  living  in  the  greenhouse  connected  with  the  big 
hotel.  The  gardener  told  me  that  it  had  come  in  of  itself,  and 
persisted  in  staying.  He  had  tried  in  vain  to  get  rid  of  it. 
Tossed  out  of  doors,  it  would  at  once  return  and  make  itself 
at  home. 


A  FROSTY  MORNING  95 

occasional  mockingbird  (more  than  once  in 
splendid  song),  a  shrike  now  and  then,  a  flock 
of  myrtle-birds,  and  another  of  palm  warblers, 
a  good  many  white-breasted  swallows  and  turkey 
buzzards  overhead,  with  a  bunch  of  silent  spar- 
rows skulking  beneath  the  dwarf  palmettoes,  — 
these  are  what  I  now  remember. 

Birds  or  no  birds,  flowers  or  no  flowers,  I 
should  have  enjoyed  the  eight  miles.  The  bright 
sunshine,  the  temperate,  genial  warmth,  the 
endless,  widely  spaced  woods,  the  blue  sky,  and 
on  one  side  the  blue  expanse  of  Biscayne  Bay,  — 
summer  in  winter,  —  I  am  not  so  long  from 
snowy  Massachusetts  but  that  these  things  are 
enough  to  make  for  me  a  kind  of  perpetual  fiesta. 
As  I  said  to  begin  with  (and  it  is  as  true  of 
thoughts  and  feelings  as  of  the  tenderest  of 
garden  crops),  there  is  nothing  like  weather. 


BEWILDERMENT 

IF  any  untraveled  Northern  botanist  wishes  to 
be  puzzled,  hopelessly  confused,  clean  put  out 
of  his  reckoning,  let  him  come  to  Miami.  His 
knowledge  will  drop  away  from  him  till  not  a 
rag  is  left.  Let  him  arrive,  as  I  did,  after  dark, 
and  in  the  morning  take  the  road  southward  to 
Cocoanut  Grove.  The  distance  is  only  five  miles, 
and  the  walking  excellent.  I  should  like  to  go 
with  him,  and  listen  to  his  exclamations  and 
comments. 

The  cocoanut  palms  before  the  hotel,  as  he 
leaves  the  piazza,  he  has  no  need  to  inquire 
about ;  such  things  he  has  at  least  seen  in  pic- 
tures. And  the  parti-colored  crotons,  likewise, 
are  nothing  new ;  he  has  seen  the  like  in  hot- 
houses, if  nowhere  else.  And  the  scores  of  big, 
round  hibiscus  bushes,  each  with  its  score  or  two 
of  regal  scarlet  blossoms,  —  these,  or  poverty- 
stricken  imitations  of  them,  he  has  admired  before 
now  in  the  Boston  Public  Garden  and  elsewhere. 
The  acalypha  shrubs,  also,  he  will  perhaps  recog- 
nize upon  a  second  look,  though  he  has  never 
before  seen  them  growing  as  a  hedge,  carefully 


BEWILDERMENT  97 

squared,  three  or  four  feet  high,  and  as  many 
feet  thick.  Yonder  euphorbia  bush,  too  (Pom- 
settia),  with  its  flaring,  flaming  rosettes  of  scar- 
let floral  leaves  at  the  tips  of  the  stems  —  this, 
like  the  crotons,  he  is  more  or  less  familiar  with 
under  glass.  All  these  are  cultivated  plants, 
pleasant  to  look  upon  out  of  doors  in  midwinter, 
but  of  themselves  not  especially  interesting,  per- 
haps, to  a  botanist. 

But  now,  at  the  foot  of  Thirteenth  or  Four- 
teenth Street,  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from 
the  hotel,  we  come  to  some  vacant  lots.  Here 
are  a  few  dingy  live-oaks  (still  with  last  year's 
leaves  on),  and  in  their  shadow,  sprawling  over 
the  tangled  undergrowth,  a  wilderness  of  gadding 
morning-glory  vines.  How  lovely  the  flowers  are 
—  pink  and  blue !  Unless  it  be  the  ubiquitous 
fish  crow,  there  is  nothing  else  so  common  in  this 
Miami  country  as  the  morning-glory ;  and  the 
vines,  acres  on  acres,  hold  in  bloom,  one  kind 
and  another,  so  I  am  given  to  understand,  almost 
or  quite  the  whole  year  round. 

Now  we  leave  the  sidewalk  and  are  in  the  pine 
woods.  The  trees  —  long-leaved  pines  —  our 
botanist  knows  well  enough,  the  train  having 
brought  him  past  a  thousand  miles  of  such,  on 
his  way  hither;  though,  even  so,  he  might  be 
puzzled  to  tell  to  which  of  two  related  species 


98  FLORIDA 

(Palustris  and  Elliottii)  they  belong.  From  the 
rude  bridge,  as  we  cross  the  Miami  River,  he 
admires  the  myriad-footed,  glossy-leaved  man- 
grove thickets  that  line  the  banks,  especially  as 
he  looks  up  the  stream.  Just  beyond  are  ancient 
live-oaks,  the  huge  spreading  branches  of  which 
support  a  profusion  of  air-plants  (poor  relations 
of  the  pineapple),  with  here  and  there  an  orchid. 
I  should  like  to  show  him  an  Epidendrum  such 
as  I  secured  ten  days  ago  —  an  open  spray  of  a 
dozen  blooms,  handsome  enough  to  grace  the 
finest  of  hothouse  collections ;  but  I  have  not 
been  able  to  find  a  second  specimen,  with  all  my 
searching.  However,  a  smaller,  one-flowered  spe- 
cies is  common  enough,  and  if  he  is  sufficiently 
enterprising  he  will  climb  one  of  the  trees  for  it, 
or  —  as  I  did  —  cut  a  stick  by  means  of  which, 
with  more  or  less  hard  work,  he  can  pry  the 
bulbous  root  from  its  foothold. 

"  What  is  this  yellow  flower  ?  "  he  asks,  as 
we  go  on. 

"  I  don't  know,"  is  my  answer.  "  Some  mem- 
ber of  the  pulse  family." 

My  companion  knew  as  much  as  that  already. 

"  And  this  bush,  with  its  strangely  contorted 
pods?" 

Here  I  am  more  at  home,  and  proud  to 
show  it.  The  plant  is  Pithecolobium  Unguis- 


BEWILDERMENT  99 

Cati,  I  tell  him.  Small  wonder  the  pods  are 
twisted. 

With  this  we  come  to  more  live-oaks,  on  which 
are  more  air-plants  and  orchids,  and  just  be- 
yond is  a  confusion  of  thick-leaved  trees  and 
shrubs. 

"What  is  this? "he  asks;  "and  this?  and 
this  ?  " 

I  have  no  idea,  I  am  obliged  to  answer.  But 
the  tall  tree  a  little  farther  on  is  Ficus  aurea,  I 
hasten  to  remark,  with  a  show  of  extreme  erudi- 
tion. 

"  A  fig-tree  ?  "  he  answers,  in  a  tone  of  sur- 
prise ;  for,  being  a  botanist,  he  knows,  of  course, 
that^cws  is  fig. 

Yes,  I  assure  him,  it  is  a  kind  of  fig  (rubber 
tree,  it  is  otherwise  called),  though  the  leaf  is 
small  and,  as  botanists  say,  "entire,"  not  in 
the  least  resembling  the  modest  fig-leaf  of  con- 
vention. I  know  the  tree's  name,  as  I  know  that 
of  the  shrub  before  mentioned,  because  I  was 
told  it  yesterday.  One's  knowledge  (of  names) 
increases  rapidly  under  favorable  circumstances, 
in  a  country  like  this. 

Yonder  very  noticeable  shrub,  bearing  large 
globular  bunches  of  small  bright-purplish  berries 
(no  eye  could  miss  them),  is  the  French  mul- 
berry, so  called  (Callicarpa  Americana)  ;  and 


100  FLORIDA 

the  larger  and  leafier  bush  near  it,  set  along 
the  branches  with  more  loosely  disposed  orange- 
colored  berries,  is  Trema  micrantha,  a  plant 
which  Chapman's  Flora  credits  to  but  one  place 
in  the  United  States,  —  "  Shellmounds  in  Las- 
tero  Bay,  South  Florida," — though  hereabout 
it  is  one  of  the  commonest  of  the  common. 
Both  it  and  the  French  mulberry  are  prime 
favorites  with  various  kinds  of  birds.  Mocking- 
birds and  catbirds  are  feasting  on  the  berries  at 
this  moment. 

And  yes,  here  is  a  tree  that  I  knew  would  ex- 
cite my  companion's  curiosity.  No  stranger  ever 
drove  over  this  road  (and  the  first  drive  of  every 
newcomer  to  Miami  is  taken  this  way)  without 
asking  his  driver  about  it :  a  large  tree,  all  its 
leafy  branches  far  above  the  ground,  with  a 
strangely  conspicuous  mahogany-colored  bark, 
the  outermost  layers  of  which  peel  off  in  loose 
papery  flakes,  after  the  manner  of  the  canoe  birch. 
On  my  first  jaunt  into  the  hammock  I  heard  more 
than  one  driver  pronounce  its  eloquent  name  — 
gumbo-limbo.  The  two  or  three  men  of  whom  I 
made  inquiries  could  tell  me  nothing  more,  till 
my  host,  who  professed  no  botany,  modestly  sug- 
gested a  reference  to  the  dictionary.  There,  sure 
enough,  I  found  the  clue  I  was  seeking.  The  tree 
is  Bursera  gummifera,  or  Jamaica  birch,  one  of 


BEWILDERMENT  J  ^ ';  \  ipi 

two  Florida  representatives  of  the  tropical  torch- 
wood  family.  It  is  among  the  chief  of  my  South 
Florida  admirations,  especially  for  its  color.  It 
and  the  Seminoles  should  be  of  kindred  stock. 
In  the  lobby  of  the  hotel,  the  other  evening,  I 
heard  one  man  rallying  another  (who  had  been 
fishing  and  playing  golf  bareheaded)  upon  the 
magnificent  complexion  he  had  put  on.  "  Your 
face  reminds  me  of  the  gumbo-limbo,"  the  joker 
said.  The  comparison  was  obvious.  I  had  been 
thinking  the  same  thing. 

Our  course  takes  us  through  a  brief  tract  of 
pine  land  largely  occupied  by  bayberry  bushes, 
about  which  there  are  always  many  myrtle  war- 
blers (which  is  the  same  as  to  say  bayberry  war- 
blers) ;  and  presently  we  are  in  a  dense  tropical 
forest.  This  is  the  place  I  have  desired  my  com- 
panion to  see ;  and  here,  after  a  few  minutes  of 
silent  wonderment,  his  curiosity  begins  to  play. 
"  What  is  this  ?  What  is  this  ?  What  is  this  ?  " 
His  interrogations  come  in  crowds ;  and  to  every 
one  my  answer  is  ready  —  "I  don't  know."  I 
am  in  the  case  of  the  poor  fellow  whose  sarcastic 
French  instructor  promised  to  teach  him  in  one 
sentence  how  to  answer  correctly  every  question 
he  might  be  asked.  Like  him  I  have  only  to  re- 
spond, "e/e  ne  sais  pas"  Trees,  shrubs,  and 
vines  are  all  far  out  of  my  range.  During  the 


**l*-cc  el:|^         FLORIDA 

fortnight  that  I  have  been  here,  to  be  sure,  I 
have  begun  to  distinguish  differences  among 
them,  and  even  to  recognize  individuality ;  but 
as  to  what  they  are,  and  what  their  names  are,  I 
know  absolutely  nothing. 

It  is  a  strange  sensation,  so  delightfully,  tan- 
talizingly  strange  that  I  can  hardly  keep  away 
from  the  pkce.  Day  after  day,  in  spite  of  the 
dust  and  (sometimes)  the  scorching  heat,  my 
steps  turn  in  this  direction.  "  Where  have  you 
been  ?  "  my  new  acquaintances  say  to  me  at  the 
dinner  table;  and  I  answer,  almost  of  course, 
"  Down  in  the  hammock." 

Here  and  there,  wherever  there  is  a  favorable 
opening,  I  venture  a  few  steps  into  the  jungle ; 
but  sometimes  I  cannot  stay.  A  feeling  of  some- 
thing like  superstitious  terror  comes  over  me, 
the  wood  is  so  dense  and  dark  and  strange.  I 
am  glad  to  get  back  into  the  dusty  road.  My 
supposititious  companion  will  be  braver  than  I, 
I  dare  say,  but  he  will  be  with  me  in  confessing 
how  conf  usingly  alike  all  the  trees  look,  and  how 
utterly  unavailable  all  his  previous  knowledge 
proves  to  be.  On  this  point  I  have  talked  with 
two  botanists,  and  they  have  both  assured  me 
that,  although  they  had  lived  much  in  upper  Flor- 
ida, they  found  themselves  here  in  a  world  they 
knew  nothing  about.  With  me,  who  am  not  a 


BEWILDERMENT  103 

botanist,  or  only  the  sheerest  dabbler  in  the  sci- 
ence, it  is  literally  true  that  in  this  sub-tropical 
forest  I  cannot  guess  at  so  much  as  the  family 
relationship  of  one  plant  in  twenty. 


WAITING  FOR  THE  MUSIC 

I  AM  impatient  for  the  concert  to  begin.  It  is 
the  7th  of  February.  For  three  weeks  I  have 
been  in  Miami ;  birds  are  plentiful ;  the  country, 
one  may  almost  say,  is  full  of  them ;  the  weather, 
mostly  a  few  shades  too  warm  for  a  pedestrian's 
comfort,  seems  to  be  all  that  birds  could  wish ; 
but  thus  far  there  has  been  scarcely  a  sign  of  the 
grand  vernal  awakening.  Warm  or  cold,  for  the 
birds  it  is  still  winter.  Phoebes,  to  be  sure,  have 
sung  ever  since  my  arrival,  I  cannot  help  won- 
dering why ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  white-eyed 
vireos.  It  is  impossible  to  walk  through  the  ham- 
mock woods  without  getting  somewhat  more  than 
one's  fill  of  their  saucily  emphatic  deliverances. 
For  aught  I  can  see,  they  are  quite  as  loqua- 
cious now  as  they  will  be  two  or  three  months 
hence.  Once  in  a  while,  hardly  of  tener  than  once 
a  week,  I  should  say,  I  have  heard  a  mocking- 
bird letting  himself  loose,  and  rather  more  fre- 
quently, especially  during  the  last  few  days, 
cardinal  grosbeaks  have  sweetened  the  air  with 
their  whistle ;  but  for  much  the  greater  part  the 
birds  are  dumb.  On  the  morning  of  February  1, 


WAITING  FOR  THE  MUSIC  105 

as  I  stepped  out  upon  the  piazza,  a  house  wren 
sang  from  a  live-oak  by  the  kitchen  door.  I  re- 
membered the  date.  "  Good !  "  said  I  to  myself, 
"  the  time  of  the  singing  of  birds  is  come."  But 
I  was  too  much  in  haste.  Since  then  I  have  heard 
plenty  of  wren  chattering,  but  not  another  note 
of  wren  music. 

Still  the  opening  of  the  annual  concert  cannot 
be  much  longer  delayed.  When  I  was  in  Florida 
nine  years  ago,  mockingbirds  were  in  free  song 
at  St.  Augustine,  before  the  middle  of  February ; 
and  at  this  point,  three  hundred  miles  and  more 
farther  south,  the  season  must  be  earlier  rather 
than  later. 

Some  of  the  more  distinctively  Southern  of  the 
birds  about  me  I  am  especially  desirous  of  hear- 
ing—  the  Florida  yellow-throats,  for  example,  a 
local  race  of  the  Maryland  yellow-throat,  so 
called.  They  are  everywhere  in  sight  (the  dark 
brown  of  the  flanks  distinguishing  them  readily), 
and  as  their  music  is  said  to  be  very  unlike  that 
of  their  familiar  Northern  relative,  I  am  natu- 
rally desirous  of  adding  it  to  my  (memorized) 
collection.  It  will  be  nothing  great,  presumably, 
but  it  will  be  something  new. 

Still  more  interesting  will  be  the  song  of  the 
painted  bunting,  or  nonpareil,  a  beauty  of  beau- 
ties that  I  had  never  seen  (a  wild  one,  I  mean) 


106  FLORIDA 

until  this  winter.  About  Miami  it  is  decidedly 
common,  though  the  green  females  show  them- 
selves ten  times  as  often  as  the  red,  blue,  and 
yellow-green  males.  What  a  superbly  dressed 
creature  the  masculine  nonpareil  is !  And  he 
carries  himself  as  if  he  knew  it.  "  Dear  me,"  he 
seems  always  to  be  saying ;  "  this  Joseph's  coat 
of  mine  makes  me  so  conspicuous !  Some  day 
it  will  be  my  undoing."  My  readers  will  most 
likely  have  seen  the  gorgeous  little  creature  in 
cages  (I  found  one  many  years  ago  in  the  Bos- 
ton Public  Garden,  I  remember),  though  the 
chances  are  that  they  have  never  seen  him  in 
anything  like  his  brightest  and  liveliest  feather. 
A  bird,  like  a  butterfly,  was  born  to  be  looked 
at  out  of  doors  with  the  sunlight  on  him.  So  far 
I  have  heard  no  note  from  the  nonpareil  except 
his  rather  soft  chip.  The  birds  frequent  weedy 
tangles  in  open  grounds,  showing  special  fondness 
for  patches  of  the  white  bur-marigold,  and  seem 
to  be  well  scattered  over  the  country. 

Day  after  day  I  walk  down  through  the  ham- 
mock (I  have  spoken  of  it  before,  and  most 
likely  shall  do  so  again)  between  Miami  and 
Cocoanut  Grove.  Indeed,  so  constant  are  my 
peregrinations  thither  that  I  begin  to  find  my 
innocent  self  treated  as  a  kind  of  mysterious 
personage  —  one  of  the  "  features  "  of  the  place, 


WAITING  FOR  THE  MUSIC  107 

so  to  speak,  an  "object  of  interest,"  like  the 
gumbo-limbos,  the  air-plants,  and  the  blossoming 
lime  trees.  Three  times,  at  least,  I  have  over- 
heard a  driver  describing  me  to  his  fares  as  "  the 
man  who  comes  down  through  this  hammock 
every  day  "  —  with  strong  emphasis  on  the  last 
two  words.  One  passenger  was  good  enough  to 
surmise,  quite  audibly,  that  I  might  be  a  botanist, 
while  another  loudly  proclaimed  his  belief  that 
I  must  be  "  a  sort  of  a  bird  fiend."  So  much 
for  being  useful  in  one's  day  and  generation. 
The  tourist  mind  —  like  the  tourist  stomach  — 
abhors  a  vacuum.  It  must  have  something  to 
browse  upon.  And  the  drivers  know  it.  It  is  a 
bad  day  for  the  cow  when  she  loses  her  cud. 

In  sober  truth  the  hammock  is  well  worth  a 
daily  visit ;  and  almost  as  often  as  I  am  here  it 
comes  over  me  what  a  glorious  concert  hall  it  will 
be  when  all  these  thousands  of  birds  find  their 
voices,  if  they  ever  do ;  for  it  may  be,  I  know, 
that  the  great  majority  will  start  on  their  jour- 
ney northward  before  that  happy  day  arrives. 
Here  —  to  name  only  some  of  the  more  common 
species  —  here  are  mockingbirds,  catbirds,  cardi- 
nals, house  wrens,  Carolina  wrens,  ruby-crowned 
kinglets,  palm  warblers,  myrtle  warblers,  parula 
warblers,  prairie  warblers,  black-and-white  war- 
blers, Florida  yellow-throats,  oven-birds,  blue- 


108  FLORIDA 

gray  gnatcatchers  (a  host),  white-eyed  vireos 
(another  host),  solitary  vireos,  che winks,  painted 
buntings,  phosbes,  crested  flycatchers,  and  blue 
jays.  What  a  chorus  there  would  be  if  the  spring 
should  get  into  all  their  throats  at  once  !  Might 
I  be  here  to  listen  !  Then,  indeed,  I  could  make 
a  list,  with  the  hearing  to  help  the  eyesight.  Now 
I  follow  the  road,  and  find  only  such  birds  as 
happen  to  be  near  it  at  the  moment  when  I  pass. 
Then  it  would  be  another  story.  I  should  need 
a  stenographer.  The  names  would  crowd  upon 
the  pencil. 

It  is  really  an  astonishing,  unnatural-seeming 
thing  —  this  multitude  of  birds,  in  this  cloudless 
summer  weather,  with  mating-time  so  close  at 
hand,  and  no  impulse  to  sing.  Yet  that  expres- 
sion is  a  trifle  too  strong,  or  at  least  too  sweeping. 
This  forenoon  I  heard  a  gnatcatcher  warbling 
softly,  as  if  to  himself,  tuning  his  instrument,  it 
may  be,  or,  more  likely,  dreaming.  The  cardi- 
nals, too,  are  certainly  growing  amorous.  I  see 
the  bright  males  quarreling  among  themselves 
here  and  there  (they  are  constantly  in  the  road), 
and  not  infrequently,  as  I  have  said,  they  whistle 
with  all  sweetness.  At  that  work  there  is  no 
bird  to  excel  them.  How  any  female  heart  can 
resist  such  appeals  is  more  than  any  bachelor's 
heart  can  imagine.  I  rejoice  in  their  numbers. 


WAITING  FOR  THE  MUSIC  109 

I  should  love  to  walk  through  the  hammock  and 
hear  them  all  whistling  together,  a  chorus  a  good 
mile  in  length  and  no  rod  without  a  bird. 

Loggerhead  shrikes  are  paired  or  pairing. 
The  other  day  I  saw  one  fly  up  from  the  ground 
and  feed  another  perched  on  a  telegraph  wire. 
He  was  doing  no  more  than  was  meet,  her  cool- 
appearing,  unresponsive  manner  seemed  to  say. 
Mockingbirds,  also,  though  singing  little,  are  be- 
ginning to  manifest  symptoms  of  jealousy.  If  all 
the  mockers  and  all  the  cardinals  should  break 
into  voice  at  once,  the  air  itself  would  hardly 
contain  the  music. 

Two  pileated  woodpeckers  that  I  see  every 
few  days  at  a  particular  spot  in  the  hammock 
have  already  come  to  an  understanding,  or  so  I 
fancy  from  certain  bits  of  conduct  that  I  have 
been  privileged  to  witness.  This  morning  I  stood 
watching  the  female  as  she  hammered  to  pieces 
a  decayed  branch  close  by  me,  when  all  at  once 
her  mate  called  in  the  distance.  Instantly  she 
held  up  her  head,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  Hark ! 
Was  that  he  ? "  and  the  next  moment  she  was 
gone.  Then  I  heard  low  conversational  notes, 
followed  presently  by  loud  drumming  on  a  reso- 
nant stub  or  branch.  I  thought  of  what  I  have 
heard  preachers  say,  that  Heaven  is  a  state,  not 
a  place. 


110  FLORIDA 

Pileated  woodpeckers  are  birds  good  to  look 
at,  and,  wild  as  they  look,  it  is  pleasant  to  find 
them  so  approachable.  But  in  fact,  this  is  most 
productive  woodpecker  country.  Here  are  flick- 
ers in  abundance,  red-bellies  almost  as  many,  and 
along  with  them  the  red-headed,  the  red-cockaded 
(in  the  pine  lands),  the  yellow-bellied  (least  com- 
mon of  all),  the  downy,  and  the  hairy ;  all,  in 
short,  that  could  be  expected,  with  the  exception 
of  the  ivory-billed ;  and  (such  is  human  nature) 
I  would  give  more  to  see  him  than  all  the  rest 
together. 

Well,  I  will  not  wish  time  away,  as  the  say- 
ing is.  I  begin  to  perceive  that  I  have  none  to 
spare.  But  I  shall  rejoice  when  some  morning  I 
go  out  and  find  the  conductor's  arm  lifted,  and 
the  chorus  minding  the  beat. 


PEKIPATETIC  BOTANY 

WHEN  I  called  upon  my  friend  the  entomologist, 
a  few  evenings  ago,  she  informed  me  that  she  had 
passed  a  very  exciting  day.  While  out  on  her 
usual  insect-collecting  expedition,  along  the  bay 
shore,  she  had  come  suddenly  upon  an  unknown 
plant  growing  among  the  mangrove  bushes.  A 
glance  at  the  blossom  showed  that  it  must  belong 
to  the  mallow  family,  and  on  getting  back  to  the 
hotel  and  consulting  the  manual,  she  determined 
it  at  once  as  Pavonia  racemosa,  —  "  Miami  and 
Key  Biscayne."  Every  collector  knows  the  plea- 
sure of  discovering  a  plant  or  other  specimen, 
the  known  habitat  of  which  is  entitled  to  this 
kind  of  exact  specification. 

"  Very  good,"  said  I,  when  she  had  finished 
the  story,  "  I  shall  go  down  to-morrow  and  look 
at  Pavonia  racemosa  for  myself." 

The  next  afternoon,  therefore,  saw  me  at  the 
place ;  but  it  appeared  that  I  had  not  sufficiently 
attended  to  my  friend's  instructions.  At  all 
events,  I  could  find  nothing  that  looked  like  a 
Malva.  In  a  country  so  richly  and  strangely 
furnished  as  this,  however,  a  visitor  cannot  turn 


112  FLORIDA 

Ms  eyes  in  any  direction  without  putting  them 
upon  something  he  never  saw  before ;  and  so  it 
happened  that  while  I  hunted  vainly  for  one 
thing  I  found  another  and  better  ;  or  if  it  was 
not  better  in  itself,  it  was  more  unexpected  and 
interesting.  This  was  a  shrub,  or  small  tree,  bear- 
ing large,  glossy,  coriaceous  leaves,  clustered  near 
the  ends  of  the  branches,  from  which  depended 
long,  smooth,  pear-shaped  or  gourd-shaped  buds. 
More  careful  search  revealed  a  few  faded  flowers 
and  a  large  pendent  green  fruit.  And  then,  ten 
minutes  afterward,  as  I  was  starting  away,  my 
eyes  fell  upon  a  clump  of  the  rare  favonia. 

With  that,  of  course,  there  was  no  room  for 
difficulty.  I  had  only  to  compare  the  specimen 
with  the  printed  description,  and  check  the  name. 
But  as  for  the  strange  shrub,  of  which  I  had  bud, 
blossom,  fruit,  and  leaf  (what  more  could  a  man 
desire?),  with  that  I  was  fairly  beaten.  Even 
a  methodical,  schoolboyish  use  of  the  "  key  "  was 
without  result.  The  signs  brought  me,  or  seemed 
to  bring  me,  to  the  Bignonia  family,  and  there 
came  to  nothing. 

Happily  a  professor  of  botany  in  one  of  our 
great  universities  had  arrived  in  town  within  the 
last  twenty-four  hours,  and  after  supper  I  invited 
him  to  my  room  to  help  me  with  the  puzzle.  He 
set  about  the  work  just  as  I  had  done,  only  after 


PERIPATETIC  BOTANY  113 

a  more  workmanlike  fashion,  and  him  also  the 
key  led  to  the  Signoniacece^  but  no  farther.  As 
the  common  saying  is,  the  trail  had  "  run  up  a 
tree."  In  short,  with  all  the  facts  before  us,  — 
leaves,  buds,  blossom,  fruit,  —  we  were  stumped. 
"  It  is  some  representative  of  the  Bignonia  fam- 
ily not  included  in  Chapman's  Flora,"  was  the 
professor's  final  verdict. 

The  next  forenoon  we  had  agreed  to  spend 
together  in  the  big  hammock,  through  which  I 
had  been  sauntering  by  myself  for  the  past  five 
weeks.  We  should  pass  the  Agricultural  Experi- 
ment Station  on  the  way,  and  I  determined  to 
carry  the  troublesome  specimen  along  and  submit 
it  to  the  professor  in  charge.  So  said,  so  done ; 
but  as  we  stopped  at  the  post  office,  there  stood 
the  man  himself  at  the  door.  "  What  is  this? "  I 
asked,  scarcely  waiting  to  bid  him  good-morning. 
" Crescentia"  he  answered  promptly,  " a  plant 
of  the  Bignonia  family."  So  the  other  professor 
had  been  exactly  right. 

And  now  for  the  more  dramatic  part  of  the 
story.  The  day  before  —  at  noon  of  the  day  on 
which  I  found  the  plant  in  question —  I  received 
a  letter  from  a  Boston  friend,  himself  a  univer- 
sity professor  of  botany,  to  whom  I  had  written, 
begging  him  to  quit  his  desk,  like  a  reasonable 
man,  and  join  me  in  this  botanical  paradise.  He 


114  FLORIDA 

replied  that  he  could  not  come,  and  furthermore, 
that  he  wasn't  so  very  sorry.  New  England 
winter  is  to  him  a  constant  refreshment  and  ex- 
hilaration, it  appears.  Happy  New  Englander  ! 
"  To-day  is  simply  perfect,"  he  wrote,  "  and  you 
can't  beat  it  in  Miami."  As  to  that  point  I  re- 
serve my  opinion.  "  How  changed  the  place  must 
be  from  what  it  was  when  I  was  there  in  the 
'80's,"  he  continued.  "  No  railroad  then  within 
hundreds  of  miles,  and  none  of  your  modern  im- 
provements. It  is  a  great  place  for  plants.  I 
shan't  forget  how  delighted  I  was  to  find  Ores- 
centia  cucurbitina  in  flower.  I  had  searched  the 
whole  range  of  Keys  for  it  in  vain." 

This  very  plant,  of  the  existence  of  which  I 
had  never  before  heard,  I  had  found,  without 
knowing  it,  within  two  hours  after  receiving  my 
friend's  letter.1 

Winter  botanizing  by  newcomers,  in  a  coun- 
try so  foreign  as  this,  where  much  the  greater 
part  of  the  shrubs  and  trees  are  West  Indian, 
with  no  better  help  than  Chapman's  Flora,  is 
carried  on  under  almost  discouraging  difficulties. 
"  If  we  only  had  the  blossoms  !  "  the  professor  is 
continually  exclaiming.  And  his  pupil  responds, 

1  And  after  all  this  talk  about  the  plant  I  must  in  candor 
add  that  it  turned  out  to  be  by  no  means  rare  along  the  bay 
shore.  I  think  I  am  not  wrong  in  remembering  to  have  heard 
it  called  the  calabash  tree. 


PERIPATETIC  BOTANY  115 

"  Yes,  if  we  only  had ! "  As  it  is,  we  content 
ourselves  with  finding  out  a  few  things  daily, 
guessing  at  characters  and  relationships  (no  very 
bad  practice,  by  the  way),  running  down  all  sorts 
of  clues,  real  or  imaginary,  like  detectives  on  the 
hunt  for  a  murderer,  and  even  asking  questions 
freely  of  chance  passers-by,  especially  of  the  nu- 
merous class  known  by  the  white  people  hereabout 
as  "  Bahama  niggers."  They,  rather  than  their 
pale-faced  superiors,  seem  to  be  observant  of 
natural  things.  It  is  likely,  too,  that  they  or  their 
forbears  may  have  brought  some  traditionary 
knowledge  of  such  matters  from  the  islands  where 
the  plants  are  more  at  home.  At  all  events,  it 
is  pleasant  to  notice  how  ready  even  the  black 
children  are,  not  only  to  answer  questions,  but 
to  ask  them  as  well,  about  any  flowers  that  one 
happens  to  be  carrying. 

The  other  day  I  came  suddenly  upon  a  bush, 
the  like  of  which  I  had  seen  and  wondered  over 
a  hundred  times  since  my  arrival  in  Miami,  re- 
marking especially  the  highly  peculiar,  almost 
perpendicular  carriage  of  its  innumerable  thick, 
brightly  varnished  leaves,  a  device,  as  the  pro- 
fessor had  suggested,  for  protecting  them  against 
the  vertical  rays  of  the  sun.  I  had  never  seen 
either  fruit  or  blossom,  but  here,  on  this  particu- 
lar plant,  my  eye  fell  upon  a  few  scattered  pur- 


116  FLORIDA 

plish  drupes.  Now,  then,  here  was  something  to 
go  upon.  Now,  possibly,  with  a  sprinkling  more 
of  good  luck,  I  might  find  the  name  of  the  bush. 
I  was  a  mile  or  two  from  town,  on  the  road  to 
Alapattah  Prairie,  where  there  are  many  truck 
farms.  A  white  man  came  along,  one  of  the 
"  truckers,"  driving  homeward  from  the  city. 

"  Do  you  know  what  this  is  ? "  I  inquired, 
showing  him  the  specimen. 

"No,  sir,"  he  answered. 

Soon  I  met  another  man,  and  proposed  to  him 
the  same  question,  with  the  same  result.  A  third 
attempt  was  no  more  successful.  Then  I  over- 
took two  colored  men  talking  beside  a  quarry. 

"  Excuse  me,"  I  said,  "  but  can  you  tell  me 
the  name  of  this  plant?" 

"  Yes,  sir,  it  is  cocoa  plum,"  answered  one  of 
them ;  and  the  other  said,  "  Yes,  cocoa  plum." 

And  so  it  was ;  for  on  referring  to  the  man- 
ual I  found  the  bush  fully  described  under  that 
name. 

Another  experiment  in  this  kind  of  putting 
myself  to  school,  it  is  fair  to  add,  was  less  in  the 
Bahama  colored  man's  favor.  A  tourist  whom 
I  happened  upon  resting  beside  the  hammock 
road  held  in  his  hand  two  or  three  twigs,  from 
each  of  which  depended  a  large,  stony,  pear- 
shaped  fruit,  and  seeing  me  curious  about  the 


PERIPATETIC  BOTANY  117 

novelty,  he  kindly  offered  me  one.  This,  also,  I 
forthwith  carried  into  the  city,  stopping  passen- 
gers by  the  way  —  like  a  natural-historical  So- 
crates —  to  ask  them  about  it.  No  one,  white  or 
black,  could  tell  me  anything  till  in  a  fruit  shop 
I  questioned  a  white  boy.  "  It 's  a  seven-year 
apple,"  he  said.  "  Some  foolish  local  name,"  I 
thought.  At  all  events  it  could  do  me  no  good, 
since  it  was  not  to  be  found  in  Chapman's  index. 
But  that  evening,  on  my  showing  the  specimen 
to  the  entomologist,  and  telling  her  what  the  boy 
had  said,  she  replied,  "  Certainly,  that  is  right. 
The  plant  is  Genipa,  or  seven-year  apple."  And 
under  the  word  "  Genipa  "  I  found  it  so  spoken 
of  in  the  Standard  Dictionary.  There  the  fruit 
is  said  to  be  edible,  which  seems  to  disprove  the 
conjecture  of  another  lady  to  whom  I  had  shown 
it,  that  it  derives  its  name  from  the  fact  that  it 
would  take  an  eater  seven  years  to  digest  it. 
Apples,  like  men,  are  not  fairly  to  be  judged 
in  the  green  state. 

I  have  said  that  this  guessing  at  characters 
and  relationships  is  not  a  bad  discipline.  And 
no  more  is  it  the  worst  of  fun.  Of  this  I  had 
only  two  days  ago  a  strikingly  happy  proof. 
Everywhere  in  the  hammock  there  grows  a  tall 
tree,  noticeable  for  the  peculiar  color  of  its  bark 
and  its  channeled  and  often  fantastically  con- 


118  FLORIDA 

torted  trunk.  The  leafy  branches  are  always  far 
overhead  (a  necessity  in  so  crowded  a  place),  and 
I  had  seen  the  purplish,  globular  drupes  only  as 
they  had  dropped  one  by  one  to  the  ground.  At 
every  opportunity  I  had  made  inquiries  about  the 
tree,  but  had  received  no  light,  nor,  after  much 
searching,  had  either  the  professor  or  myself  been 
able  to  hit  upon  so  much  as  a  plausible  conjecture 
as  to  its  identity.  Well,  two  days  ago,  as  I  say, 
we  were  walking  together  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
city,  when  we  came  to  a  tree  of  this  kind  grow- 
ing in  the  open,  the  fruit-bearing  branches  of 
which  hung  within  reach.  We  pulled  one  of  them 
down,  and  I  exclaimed  at  once,  "  Why,  this 
should  be  related  to  the  sea-grape !  "  —  a  most 
curious  West  Indian  tree  (  Coccoloba  uvifera,  a 
member  of  the  buckwheat  family !)  which  grows 
freely  along  the  shore  of  Biscayne  Bay.  "  See 
the  fruit,"  said  I,  "  for  all  the  world  like  a  bunch 
of  grapes."  With  that  we  began  a  detailed  ex- 
amination, and,  to  make  a  long  story  short,  the 
tree  proved  to  be  another  species  of  Coccoloba 
—  C.  Floridana. 

That  was  pretty  good  guessing,  based  as  it 
was  on  nothing  better  than  an  "  external  char- 
acter," as  the  professor  rather  slightingly  called 
it.  For  five  weeks  my  curiosity  had  been  exer- 
cised over  the  puzzle,  and  in  five  seconds  I  had 


PERIPATETIC  BOTANY  119 

found  the  needed  clue.  Who  will  say  that  this 
was  not  better  and  more  interesting,  and  withal 
more  instructive,  than  to  have  been  told  the  tree's 
name  on  the  first  day  I  saw  it  ? 


A  PEEP  AT  THE  EVERGLADES 

MY  first  stroll  in  Miami  was  taken  under  the 
pilotage  of  a  lady  who  had  already  spent  several 
winters  here.  In  the  course  of  it  we  came  sud- 
denly upon  a  colored  man  lying  face  downward 
in  the  grass,  under  a  blazing  sun,  fast  asleep. 
It  was  no  uncommon  happening,  my  friend  re- 
marked; she  was  always  stumbling  over  such 
dusky  sleepers.  But  in  this  Southern  clime  the 
luxury  of  physical  inactivity  is  not  appreciated 
by  black  people  alone.  I  was  walking  away  from 
the  city  at  a  rather  brisk  pace,  one  morning, 
when  I  passed  a  lonesome  shanty.  A  white  man 
sat  upon  the  rude  piazza,  and  another  man  and 
a  boy  stood  near. 

"  Are  you  going  to  work  to-day?  "  asked  the 
boy  of  the  occupant  of  the  piazza. 

"  No,"  was  the  answer,  quick  and  pithy. 

"Why  not?" 

"  I  ain't  got  time." 

I  laid  the  words  up  as  a  treasure;  I  do  not 
expect  to  hear  the  philosophy  of  indolence  more 
succinctly  and  pointedly  stated  if  I  live  a  thou- 
sand years. 


A  PEEP  AT  THE  EVERGLADES         121 

But  though  we  Northern  visitors  may  some- 
times envy  our  Southern  brethren  their  gift  of 
happy  insouciance,  it  is  not  for  our  possessing. 
We  were  born  under  another  star.  Our  lack  is 
the  precise  opposite  of  theirs ;  even  in  our  vaca- 
tion hours  we  have  seldom  time  to  sit  still. 

So  it  happened  that  on  a  sultry,  dog-day  morn- 
ing, with  a  south  wind  blowing,  the  sky  partly 
clouded,  —  a  comfort  to  the  eyes,  —  the  pro- 
fessor and  the  bird-gazer,  after  an  early  break- 
fast, set  forth  upon  a  reconnoissance  of  the 
Everglades.  We  took  each  a  boat  and  an  oars- 
man, planning  to  go  up  the  Miami  River,  or 
rather  its  south  branch,  till  we  were  among  the 
"  islands  "  —  small  pieces  of  hammock  woods 
scattered  amid  the  wilderness  of  saw-grass. 

As  each  of  us  had  his  own  boat,  so  each  had 
his  own  errand,  one  botanical,  the  other  lazily 
ornithological.  The  professor  expected  to  see 
and  learn  much  —  especially  about  the  adapta- 
tion of  plants  to  their  surroundings ;  his  asso- 
ciate expected  to  see  and  learn  little  —  little  or 
nothing ;  and  according  to  each  man's  faith,  so 
it  was  unto  him. 

For  the  first  mile  or  so  —  as  far  as  the  tide 
runs,  perhaps  —  the  river  is  densely  beset  on 
either  side  by  a  shining  green  hedge  of  man- 
grove bushes,  every  branch  sending  down  "  aerial 


122  FLORIDA 

roots  "  of  its  own,  till  landing  among  them  is  an 
adventure  hardly  to  be  thought  of.  After  the 
mangroves  come  taller  hedges  of  the  cocoa  plum, 
leafier  still,  and  equally  shining. 

"  Are  n't  you  glad  you  know  what  this  bush 
is  ?  "  I  shouted  downstream  to  the  professor. 

"  Indeed  I  am,"  he  shouted  back. 

Without  this  knowledge,  which  we  had  ac- 
quired within  a  few  days,  by  a  kind  of  accident, 
as  before  related,  our  present  state  of  mind 
would  have  been  pitiable.  We  were  surprised 
to  find  the  plant  so  fond  of  water,  having  noticed 
it  heretofore  in  comparatively  dry  situations. 
Another  example  of  the  extreme  adaptability  of 
tropical  plants,  the  professor  remarked. 

By  and  by  we  came  to  the  first  cypress  trees, 
the  only  ones  I  have  seen  in  this  all  but  swamp- 
less  Miami  neighborhood ;  beautiful  in  their  new 
dress  of  living  green.  I  rejoiced  at  the  sight. 
Under  one  of  them  we  landed,  admiring  the 
"knees"  that  its  roots  had  sent  up  till  the 
ground  was  studded  with  them.  These,  the  pro- 
fessor tells  me  (it  is  nothing  new,  by  his  account 
of  the  matter,  but  it  is  new  to  me),  are  believed 
to  serve  as  breathing  or  aerating  organs,  supply- 
ing to  the  tree  the  oxygen  for  lack  of  which, 
standing  in  water,  as  it  mostly  does,  it  would 
otherwise  drown.  All  visitors  to  Florida  are 


A  PEEP  AT  THE   EVERGLADES         123 

impressed  by  the  beauty  and  majesty  of  the 
cypress,  and  many  have  no  doubt  puzzled  them- 
selves over  the  meaning  of  these  strange,  appar- 
ently useless  protuberances  —  as  if  nature  had 
attempted  something  and  failed  —  that  are  so 
constantly  found  underneath.  "  They  never  do 
grow  to  be  trees,"  my  boatman  said. 

It  was  at  this  point,  as  nearly  as  I  remember, 
that  the  stream  grew  narrow  and  shallow  at 
once,  till  behold,  we  were  laboring  up  what 
might  fairly  be  called  rapids.  Here,  between  the 
awkward  crowding  of  the  banks  and  the  swift- 
ness of  the  current  (it  was  good,  I  said  to  my- 
self, to  see  water  actually  running  in  Florida), 
the  men  were  certainly  earning  their  money. 
Fortunately,  both  proved  equal  to  the  task. 
Then  a  bend  in  the  stream  took  us  away  from 
the  neighborhood  of  the  trees  (not  until,  in  one 
of  the  cypresses,  I  had  remarked  my  first  Miami 
nuthatch  —  a  white-breast),  and  into  the  very 
midst  of  the  saw-grass.  This  densely  growing, 
sharp-edged,  appropriately  named  grass,  higher 
than  a  man's  head,  standing  to-day  in  two  or 
three  feet  of  water,  is  said  to  cover  the  Ever- 
glades. It  must  render  them  a  frightful  place 
in  which  to  lose  one's  way.  "  I  should  rather 
be  lost  at  sea  in  a  rowboat,"  my  oarsman  de- 
clared. 


124  FLORIDA 

All  this  while,  of  course,  I  had  kept  a  lookout 
for  birds,  but,  as  I  had  expected,  to  compara- 
tively little  purpose.  No  doubt  there  were  many 
about  us,  but  not  for  our  finding.  The  shallower 
and  quieter  edges  of  the  river  were  covered  here 
and  there  with  broad  leaves  of  the  yellow  lily, 
among  which  should  have  been  at  least  a  chance 
gallinule,  it  seemed  to  me  ;  but  neither  gallinule 
nor  rail  showed  itself.  Here,  as  everywhere, 
buzzards  and  vultures  were  sailing  overhead. 
Many  white-breasted  swallows,  too,  went  hawk- 
ing over  the  grass,  and  once  a  purple  martin 
passed  near  me.  Better  still,  he  allowed  me,  in 
one  brief  note,  to  hear  his  welcome  voice.  Like 
the  new  leaves  of  the  cypress,  it  prophesied  of 
spring. 

At  intervals  a  heron  of  one  kind  or  another 
started  up  far  in  advance.  One  was  snow-white, 
but  whether  I  was  to  call  it  an  immature  little 
blue  heron  or  a  white  egret  was  more  than  could 
be  made  sure  of  at  my  distance.  I  recall,  too,  a 
flock  of  ducks,  a  cormorant  or  two,  speeding 
through  the  air  after  their  usual  headlong  man- 
ner, a  solitary  red-winged  blackbird,  astray  from 
the  flock,  and  the  cries  of  killdeer  plovers. 
Kingfishers  were  not  infrequent,  two  or  three 
ospreys  came  into  sight,  and  once,  at  least,  I 
made  sure  of  a  Louisiana  heron.  A  lean  show- 


A  PEEP  AT  THE  EVERGLADES          125 

ing,  certainly,  for  what  might  have  been  thought 
so  promising  a  place. 

And  now,  as  the  grass  grew  shorter,  so  that 
we  could  survey  the  world  about  us,  the  water  of 
a  sudden  turned  shallow.  The  professor's  flat- 
bottomed  boat  still  floated  prosperously,  but  my 
own  heavier,  keeled  craft  speedily  touched  bot- 
tom. The  rower  put  down  the  oars,  took  off  his 
shoes  and  stockings,  rolled  up  his  trousers,  and 
proceeded  to  lighten  the  boat  of  his  weight,  and 
drag  it  forward.  This  expedient  answered  for  a 
rod  or  two.  Then  we  stuck  fast  again,  and  the 
passenger  followed  his  boatman's  example  and 
took  to  the  water.  So  we  followed  along,  the 
water  now  deeper,  now  shallower,  the  bottom 
hard  and  slimy,  till  after  a  little  we  were  at  the 
end  of  our  rope.  If  we  were  to  go  farther  we 
must  leave  the  boat  behind  us. 

This  was  hardly  worth  while,  especially  as  even 
in  that  way  we  could  not  hope  to  proceed,  far 
enough  to  see  anything  different  from  what  we 
had  seen  already.  "We  will  go  back,"  I  said, 
"  drifting  with  the  current  and  stopping  by  the 
way."  And  so  we  did,  my  boatman  and  I,  leav- 
ing the  professor  —  who,  as  it  turned  out,  went 
but  a  few  rods  beyond  us  —  to  pursue  his  inves- 
tigations unhindered. 

After  all,  in  spite  of  our  indolent  intentions, 


126  FLORIDA 

the  return  was  faster  than  the  upward  journey, 
as  almost  of  necessity  happens,  whether  one  is 
descending  a  river  or  a  mountain.  The  time  for 
loitering  is  in  going  up.  One  good  thing  we  saw, 
nevertheless,  though  it  was  only  for  an  instant. 

"  What 's  that  ?  "  my  man  suddenly  exclaimed, 
in  the  eagerest  of  tones.  "  Look !  Eight  there  !  " 

"  Oh,  yes,"  I  said ;  "  a  least  bittern." 

It  stood  crosswise,  so  to  speak,  halfway  up  a 
tall  reed,  for  all  the  world  like  a  marsh  wren. 
Then  away  it  went  on  the  wing,  and  was  lost  in 
the  grass.  It  was  a  good  bird  to  see,  besides 
counting  as  "  No.  91  "  in  my  Miami  list. 

"I  never  did  see  a  bird  like  that,"  1  the  boat- 
man said.  "  Such  a  little  fellow !  "  he  called  it. 
It  was  a  pleasure  to  find  him  so  enthusiastic. 

The  best  thing  of  the  whole  trip,  notwithstand- 
ing, was  not  the  sight  of  any  bird,  but  our  lazy, 
careless,  albeit  too  rapid  gliding  down  the  stream, 
with  the  world  so  bright  and  calm  about  us  and 
above.  Here  and  there,  for  our  delight,  was  a 
tuft  of  fragrant  white  "  lilies  "  (  Crinum)  stand- 
ing amid  a  tuft  of  handsome  upright  green  leaves. 
More  than  once,  also,  we  passed  boatloads  of 
fishermen  (and  fisherwomen),  white  and  black. 

1  One  of  the  most  striking  peculiarities  of  Southern  speech 
among  the  illiterate  classes  (I  have  observed  it  in  other  states 
besides  Florida)  is  the  almost  total  absence  of  the  word  "  saw." 


A  PEEP  AT  THE  EVERGLADES         127 

One  elderly  and  carefully  dressed,  city-coated 
gentleman  I  especially  remember.  He  sat  in  the 
stern  of  the  boat  (his  African  boatman  with  a 
line  out,  also),  watching  the  fluctuations  of  his 
bob  as  earnestly,  I  thought,  as  ever  he  could 
have  watched  the  fluctuations  of  the  stock  mar- 
ket. His  whole  soul  was  centred  upon  that  bit 
of  cork  and  the  possible  fish  below.  He  actually 
had  a  nibble  as  we  passed !  What  cared  he  then 
for  "  coppers  "  or  "  industrials  "  ?  He  must  at 
some  time  or  other  have  been  a  boy.  The  lucky 
man !  By  the  look  on  his  face  he  was  happy. 
And  happiness,  if  I  am  to  judge  by  what  I  see, 
is  one  of  the  main  things,  in  Florida.  At  all 
events,  it  was  the  main  thing  that  I  found  in  the 
Everglades. 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SPRING 

MANIFOLD  are  the  perils  of  journalism.  A  few 
weeks  ago  I  filled  a  letter  with  the  praise,  most 
sincerely  felt,  of  a  certain  tropical  hammock  on 
the  road  from  Miami  to  Cocoanut  Grove,  a  place 
full  of  birds,  and  destined,  so  I  hoped,  to  be 
equally  full  of  music.  This  eulogy,  it  transpires, 
was  read  by  a  bird-loving  enthusiast  from  New 
England,  sojourning  for  the  winter  at  the  Hotel 
Ormond ;  and  what  should  he  do  but  send  me 
word,  a  stranger,  that  he  had  packed  his  trunk 
and  was  coming  down  straightway  (two  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  or  more)  to  inspect  the  wonder. 

In  due  course  he  arrived,  and  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible I  led  him  out  of  the  city,  across  the  river, 
through  a  stretch  of  blazing  sunshine,  and  at  last 
into  the  heart  of  the  hammock.  It  was  a  long 
jaunt,  much  longer  than  he  was  prepared  for,  the 
afternoon  was  hot,  and  to  make  matters  worse  the 
hammock  showed  almost  no  sign  of  that  profu- 
sion of  avian  existence,  with  the  anticipation  of 
which  my  glowing  periods  had  filled  him. 

Fortunately  for  my  reputation,  I  had  fore- 
warned him  that  such  would  be  the  case.  The 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SPRING         129 

birds,  I  explained,  either  because  the  season  had 
advanced,  or  for  some  other  reason,  had  pretty 
nearly  deserted  the  jungle  of  West  Indian  trees, 
shrubs,  and  vines,  —  for  such  this  particular  ham- 
mock is,  —  and  had  betaken  themselves  to  the 
more  open  country,  especially  to  certain  groves 
of  newly  clad  live-oaks,  whose  sturdy,  wide- 
spreading,  rival-killing,  trust-creating,  monopolis- 
tic arms,  by  the  time  the  trees  are  of  middle  age, 
have  made  for  themselves  a  relatively  sunny 
clearing. 

I  had  been  growing  aware  of  this  change  in 
the  face  of  things  for  a  week  or  two,  and  now, 
when  the  newcomer  has  been  three  or  four  days 
in  Miami,  the  reality  of  it  is  conclusively  estab- 
lished. On  two  mornings  of  the  present  week, 
for  example,  I  found  in  a  few  minutes'  stroll  be- 
fore breakfast  a  highly  interesting  flock  of  per- 
haps twenty  kinds  of  birds  in  the  live-oaks  and 
other  scattered  trees  on  the  very  edge  of  the 
city,  within  a  hundred  rods  of  my  own  doorstep  : 
fish  crows,  boat-tailed  grackles,  crow  blackbirds, 
red-headed  woodpeckers,  downy  woodpeckers, 
red-bellied  woodpeckers,  flickers,  catbirds,  mock- 
ingbirds, house  wrens,  cardinals,  palm  warblers, 
myrtle  warblers,  parula  warblers,  prairie  war- 
blers, black-and-white  warblers,  yellow-throated 
warblers,  solitary  vireos,  yellow-throated  vireos, 


130  FLORIDA 

blue  jays,  phoebes,  ground  doves,  blue-gray  gnat- 
catchers,  ruby-crowned  kinglets,  a  male  nonpareil, 
a  Baltimore  oriole,  a  crested  flycatcher,  a  hum- 
mingbird, and  a  hermit  thrush.  A  varied  bunch 
of  feathers,  and  no  mistake. 

In  the  tropical  hammock,  on  the  other  hand, 
during  the  same  forenoons,  I  saw,  as  well  as  I  re- 
member, nothing  but  white-eyed  vireos,  phoebes, 
catbirds,  cardinals,  palm  and  myrtle  warblers, 
crested  flycatchers,  nonpareils,  and  gnatcatchers. 
So  completely  has  the  condition  of  things  been 
reversed  with  the  change  of  season. 

Other  signs  are  not  lacking  that  March  has 
brought  the  spring.  Mockingbirds  are  daily  be- 
coming more  rhapsodical.  The  other  afternoon, 
out  among  the  cabins  of  the  black  suburb,  I 
stood  still  while  three  sang  at  once  on  different 
sides.  They  are  friends  of  the  poor,  as  well  as 
of  the  rich.  This  morning  two  yellow-throated 
vireos  sang,  chattered,  and  whistled  ;  and  a  most 
delicious  trilled  whistle  theirs  is,  soft,  musical, 
full  of  sweet  and  happy  feeling.  Better  still, 
almost  (because  more  of  a  novelty),  a  yellow- 
throated  warbler  sang  his  dreamy  tune  over  and 
over.  This  is  one  of  the  most  exquisite  birds  ever 
made ;  of  quiet,  modest  colors,  bluish-black  and 
white,  with  a  single  bright  jewel  to  set  them  off 
—  a  gorget  of  brilliant  yellow.  To-day  I  have 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SPRING          131 

seen  as  many  as  ten  such  beauties,  I  think.  Their 
feeding  habits  and  their  movements,  as  well  as 
their  black  and  white  stripes,  are  surprisingly 
like  those  of  the  black-and-white  creeper,  —  to 
which  they  ought  to  be  more  nearly  related  than 
the  systematists  allow,  —  while  their  song  is  in 
the  manner  of  the  indigo-bird. 

Now,  if  the  nonpareil  buntings  would  only  fall 
into  line !  Thus  far  they  have  not  favored  me 
with  a  note,  and  indifferent  musicians  as  I  know 
them  to  be,  I  believe  there  is  no  other  bird  in 
Miami  that  I  am  so  desirous  of  hearing.  Such 
feathers  as  they  wear  !  Once  in  a  while,  of  late, 
a  male  has  been  good  enough  to  take  a  some- 
what lofty  perch  and  display  himself.  If  there 
is  a  more  gorgeous  bird  in  the  United  States  I 
should  like  to  see  him.  Just  now  there  are  at 
least  three  enthusiasts  in  Miami  —  a  Kentucky 
lady,  a  Rhode  Island  man,  and  a  Massachusetts 
man  —  who  are  doing  their  best  daily  to  get  their 
fill  of  his  loveliness. 

Pho3bes  have  sung  much  less  of  late  than  they 
did  in  January.  Then  they  seemed  to  find  exist- 
ence a  perpetual  jubilee.  Red-bellied  woodpeck- 
ers, too,  are  far  less  talkative  than  they  were  a 
month  ago.  Most  likely  they  are  busier.  And 
by  the  by,  the  Kentucky  enthusiast  above  men- 
tioned pleased  me  by  calling  this  woodpecker  the 


132  FLORIDA 

"  checkerbaek,"  a  felicitous  name,  in  common 
use  in  Kentucky,  it  appears,  and  perhaps  else- 
where. I  am  happy  to  adopt  it  and  pass  it  on. 

If  there  were  words  wherewith  to  describe  the 
indescribable,  I  should  like  to  tell  of  a  bluebird 
that  I  saw  a  week  ago  about  one  of  the  vegetable 
gardens  out  on  the  prairie.  The  blue  of  that 
creature's  back  and  wings  is  not  to  be  imagined. 
The  bluest  sky  never  matched  it.  I  would  wager 
that  he  was  Florida  born.  No  Northern  bird  ever 
owned  such  a  coat.  In  my  recollection  he  will 
stand  as  one  of  the  sights  of  the  country,  along 
with  the  "  banyan  trees,"  the  snaky  green  vanilla 
vines,  and  the  tropical  jungle. 

These  letters  are  of  necessity  written  piece- 
meal. In  this  hospitable  Southern  country,  where 
the  weather  and  so  many  things  beside  are  con- 
tinually calling,  "  Come  forth  and  enjoy  us,"  one 
cannot  stay  indoors  very  long  at  once.  So  it 
happened  that  at  the  conclusion  of  the  last  para- 
graph I  put  down  my  pencil  and  started  out  for 
another  few  minutes  among  the  live-oaks.  As 
I  approached  them  I  descried  a  man  sitting  upon 
a  heap  of  coal-ashes  dumped  along  the  railway. 
He  might  have  been  Job  himself ,  to  look  at  him, 
but  at  a  second  glance  I  perceived  that  he  was 
not  actually  sitting  in  the  ashes,  but  on  a  board, 
and  instead  of  bewailing  his  afflictions  or  his 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SPRING         133 

sins,  was  peacefully  minding  the  New  Testament 
injunction,  "  Behold  the  fowls  of  the  air."  In 
short,  he  was  the  gentleman  from  Ormond,  with 
his  glass,  as  it  happened,  focused  upon  a  hand- 
some prairie  warbler. 

We  passed  the  time  of  day,  after  the  bird  had 
flown,  —  for  the  field  has  its  courtesies,  and  we 
respect  them,  —  and  he  told  me  that  in  spite  of 
the  unfavorable  north  wind  (one  of  our  periodical 
cold  spells  is  upon  us,  with  the  mercury  in  the 
forties)  he  had  ventured  out,  and  had  been  lib- 
erally rewarded.  He  had  seen  yellow-throated 
warblers,  a  parula,  a  prairie,  and  I  forget  what 
else,  and,  to  take  his  word  for  it,  was  living  in 
clover. 

Presently  a  hawk  swooped  among  the  trees, 
and  every  small  bird  became  invisible  as  if  by 
magic.  Then  my  companion  proposed  taking  a 
turn  beyond  the  fence.  This  we  did,  and  just  as 
we  came  suddenly  upon  a  huge  watch-dog  (a 
great  Dane,  I  suppose  he  would  be  called),  for- 
midable-looking and  chained,  but  fawning  upon 
us  so  eagerly  that  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
pat  him  on  the  head  and  call  him  a  good  fellow 
—  just  as  we  approached  him,  I  say,  I  nudged 
the  second  man  to  stop.  There,  straight  before 
us,  side  by  side  on  the  rim  of  an  iron  kettle  of 
water  set  under  the  trees  for  the  dog's  benefit, 


134  FLORIDA 

stood  a  male  cardinal  and  a  male  nonpareil. 
Perhaps  they  were  not  a  glorious  pair !  Them 
also  I  shall  remember,  along  with  the  miraculous 
bluebird. 

Less  brilliant,  but  even  more  memorable,  was 
my  one  Bachman's  warbler.  I  had  stopped  under 
a  live-oak,  —  on  a  return  from  the  big  hammock, 
—  and  was  putting  my  glass  upon  one  bird  after 
another  feeding  among  its  blossoms  (parulas, 
yellow-throats,  ruby-crowns,  gnatcatchers,  and 
myrtle-birds),  when  in  the  very  topmost  spray  I 
sighted  a  spot  of  coal-black  set  in  bright  yellow. 
Here  was  something  new.  From  twig  to  twig 
the  stranger  went, — rather  deliberately,  for  a 
warbler,  —  the  glass  following,  till  after  submit- 
ting for  perhaps  ten  minutes  to  my  eager  inspec- 
tion he  slipped  away,  as  birds  have  a  knack  of 
doing,  without  my  seeing  him  go.  However,  he 
had  shown  himself  perfectly — the  jet  breastplate, 
the  yellow  forehead,  the  black  crown,  the  lustrous 
olive  of  the  upper  parts,  and  the  yellow  patch 
upon  the  wing.  He  was  a  bird  that  I  had  never 
expected  to  see.  Comparatively  few  ornitholo- 
gists have  been  so  happy. 

This  was  on  March  7.  For  two  days  we  had 
noticed  indications  of  a  migratory  movement, 
especially  among  parulas  and  yellow-throated 
warblers.  Probably  the  Bachman  had  come 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SPRING          135 

from  farther  south.  My  thanks  to  him  for  treat- 
ing me  so  handsomely,  though  he  might  have 
doubled  the  obligation^  at  no  cost  to  himself,  by 
singing  me  a  tune. 


FAIK  ORMOND 

AFTER  nearly  two  months  in  the  extreme  south 
of  Florida  I  have  turned  my  face  northward,  and 
here  I  am  at  Ormond,  fair  Ormond-on-the-Hali- 
fax.  No  more  bewildering  jungles  of  nameless 
West  Indian  trees  and  climbers,  no  more  cocoa- 
nut  palms,  no  more  acres  of  wild  morning-glory 
vines.  It  gave  me  a  start  of  pleasurable  surprise 
when,  somewhere  on  this  side  of  Palm  Beach,  I 
do  not  remember  where,  I  saw  from  the  car  win- 
dow a  stately  sweet-gum  tree  all  freshly  green.  It 
had  not  occurred  to  me  till  then  that  I  had  found 
nothing  at  Miami  of  this  handsome  and  charac- 
teristic Southerner,  always  one  of  my  favorites. 

Indeed,  I  have  come  to  a  different  world.  I 
am  no  longer  in  a  foreign  country.  Here  are 
lordly  magnolias,  not  yet  in  blossom,  to  be  sure, 
but  proudly  beautiful  in  the  leaf.  Here,  too,  are 
Cherokee  roses,  loveliest  of  all  flowers,  just  coming 
into  their  kingdom.  At  sight  of  the  first  glossy- 
leaved  bush,  which  happened  to  stand  near  a 
house,  I  made  up  to  the  door,  not  stopping  twice 
to  consider,  and  asked  the  privilege  of  picking  a 
flower  and  a  bud.  The  householder  was  generous, 


FAIR  ORMOND  137 

and  the  bush  even  more  so.  "  Take  another,  and 
another,"  it  seemed  to  say,  catching  me  again 
and  again  by  the  sleeve ;  "  I  have  enough  and 
to  spare."  It  was  hard  work  for  me  to  get  away. 
Here,  also,  is  the  yellow  jessamine,  only  less 
beautiful  than  the  rose,  hanging  the  tall  forest 
trees  full  of  golden,  fragrant  bells.  And  here, 
sprinkled  along  the  wayside,  are  stores  of  blue 
violets.  None  of  these  things  are  to  be  seen  on 
the  shores  of  Biscayne  Bay.  Yes,  I  am  glad  to 
be  here. 

And  the  phlox,  likewise,  the  pretty  Drum- 
mond's  phlox  of  our  Northern  gardens,  dear  to 
me  of  old,  let  me  not  forget  that.  It  is  not  in- 
digenous to  the  country,  I  suppose,  but,  like  the 
garden  verbena,  being  here  it  makes  itself  most 
comfortably  at  home,  delighting  to  overrun  for- 
saken orange  groves  and  similar  unoccupied  waste 
places.  How  sweetly  it  looks  up  at  us  with  its 
innocent  child's  face !  Just  now  one  of  the  guests 
of  the  hotel  came  in  with  a  broad  market-basket 
loaded  with  it,  a  good  half-bushel,  at  the  very 
least.  "  I  have  counted  twenty-six  varieties,"  he 
said  (he  was  thinking  of  diversities  of  color), 
and  there  must  be  somewhere  near  that  number 
in  the  crowded  vase  that  he  has  sent  down  to 
brighten  my  writing-table. 

Here,  too,  is  the  Atlantic  beach.    In  ten  min- 


138  FLORIDA 

utes  I  cross  the  peninsula  and  am  on  the  sands ; 
or,  if  I  stroll  up  or  down  the  river  shore,  —  on 
the  western  side  of  the  peninsula,  —  I  can  hear 
all  the  while  the  pounding  of  the  surf. 

I  have  been  in  Ormond  two  days,  —  two  per- 
fect days  of  temperate  summer  weather,  —  and 
have  walked  hither  and  thither,  up  the  river, 
down  the  river,  across  the  river,  and  on  the  beach, 
seeing  comparatively  little  of  the  country  as  yet, 
but  enough  to  be  able  to  say  that  I  have  never 
found  any  place  in  Florida  where  a  walking  man 
should  be  better  contented.  There  are  paths  and 
roads  everywhere,  —  a  convenience  not  to  be 
taken  for  granted  in  this  Southern  country, — 
and  be  his  states  of  mind  never  so  variable,  he 
may  here  suit  the  jaunt  to  the  mood. 

A  visit  to  Ormond  was  not  in  my  plans  for 
the  winter,  and  I  left  Miami  with  regret.  Mi- 
gratory birds  were  arriving,  and  I  seemed  to  be 
running  away  just  when  there  was  most  to  de- 
tain me ;  those  tropical  plants,  too,  were  certain 
to  become  more  and  more  interesting  as  the  sea- 
son grew  older;  but,  like  the  verbena  and  the 
phlox,  being  here  I  am  thankful.  If  I  have  taken 
leave  of  some  splendid  birds  (those  painted 
buntings  are  in  my  eye  as  I  write),  I  have  found 
some  old  friends  in  their  place.  It  is  good  to 
see  brown  thrashers  again,  with  song  sparrows, 


FAIR  ORMOND  139 

white-throats,  and  chickadees.  One  of  a  bird- 
loving  man's  strangest  sensations  at  Miami  is 
the  absence  of  chickadees  and  tufted  titmice. 
I  had  never  been  in  such  a  place  before.  (For 
eight  weeks,  let  me  say  in  passing,  I  have  seen 
no  English  sparrows.  Unfortunately  I  have  not 
yet  forgotten  how  they  look.) 

In  my  two  days  here  I  have  counted  but  fifty 
kinds  of  birds.  A  goodly  number  that  I  know 
to  be  present,  and  even  common,  I  have  so  far 
happened  to  miss.  But  in  the  middle  of  March 
even  fifty  birds  make  something  like  a  festival. 
Mockers,  cardinals,  and  Carolina  wrens  —  the 
great  Southern  trio  —  are  tuneful,  of  course. 
Even  as  I  write,  a  wren  is  whistling  an  accom- 
paniment to  my  pencil.  If  I  could  only  put  the 
music  on  the  paper !  If  it  would  only  "  modulate 
my  periods ! "  as  Charles  Lamb  said.  When  I 
sit  in  the  shade  of  a  moss-hung  live-oak,  letting 
the  sea  breeze  fan  me,  and  listen  to  an  assembly 
of  red-winged  blackbirds  rehearsing  their  breezy 
conkaree  among  the  reeds  along  the  Halifax 
(though  it  is  not  a  simple  conkaree^  either,  but 
conkaree-dah,  the  old  tune  with  a  new  coda), 
I  think  of  swamps  in  far  Massachusetts  where 
on  this  very  12th  of  March  other  redwings  are 
opening  the  musical  season  in  a  very  different 
atmosphere. 


140  FLORIDA 

Chewinks  of  both  kinds  (red-eyes  and  white- 
eyes,  Northerners  and  Southerners)  are  calling 
and  singing.  Blue  yellow-backed  warblers  are 
musical  after  their  manner  (they  hardly  need  to 
be  singers,  being  so  exquisite  in  color,  form,  and 
motion),  and  white-eyed  vireos  are  numerous 
enough,  though  nothing  like  so  plentiful  as  at 
Miami.  Here,  as  there,  they  have  no  thought  of 
hiding  their  light  under  a  bushel. 

It  is  like  old  times  to  see  Florida  jays  sitting 
on  the  chimney-tops  of  the  summer  cottages  along 
the  dunes  behind  the  beach.  Thus  it  was  that  I 
saw  them  first,  at  Daytona,  nine  years  ago.  As  a 
friend  and  I  stopped  this  morning  to  rest  in  the 
shade  of  a  piazza,  one  came  and  stood  upon  the 
railing  and  eyed  us  long  and  curiously.  "  Have 
you  nothing  edible  about  you  ?  "  he  seemed  to 
say.  If  we  had  had  anything  to  offer  the  beggar, 
I  am  confident  he  would  have  hopped  upon  our 
knees.1  As  it  was,  he  approached  within  five  or 
six  feet  while  we  chirped  and  talked  to  him. 
Florida  jays  are  strange  creatures  for  tameness, 
and  if  it  were  thought  worth  while  could  readily 
be  domesticated. 

It  seemed  natural,  also,  to  see  pelicans  flying  in 
small  flocks  up  the  beach,  just  over  the  breakers, 

1  We  often  fed  the  birds  afterward,  and  one  or  two,  at  least, 
were  never  shy  about  coming  into  our  laps. 


FAIR  ORMOND  141 

so  that  half  the  time  they  were  invisible,  lost 
in  the  trough  of  the  sea;  moving  always  in 
Indian  file,  flapping  their  wings  and  scaling  by 
turns.  And  still  another  remembrancer  of  my 
previous  visit  to  this  part  of  Florida  was  the 
sight  of  a  bald  eagle  robbing  a  fishhawk.  The 
hawk  made  a  stubborn  defense,  dodging  this  way 
and  that,  rising  and  falling,  but  in  the  end  the 
eagle,  an  old  white-headed  fellow,  was  more  than 
a  match  for  his  victim ;  for  though  they  were 
far  away,  the  motions  of  the  contestants  showed 
plainly  enough  how  the  struggle  terminated. 

On  the  beach,  halfway  to  his  knees  in  water, 
stood  a  great  blue  heron,  leaning  seaward,  wait- 
ing for  a  fish.  He  might  have  been  standing 
there  for  nine  years.  At  all  events  I  left  him 
in  the  same  position  that  length  of  time  ago. 
"Ay,  and  you,"  he  might  rejoin,  "you  haven't 
changed,  either.  You  have  still  nothing  better 
to  do  than  to  go  wandering  up  and  down  the 
earth,  shooting  birds  with  an  opera-glass  ? " 
True  enough.  Heron  and  man,  after  nine  years 
each  is  the  same  old  sixpence.  "  The  thing  that 
hath  been  it  is  that  which  shall  be,  and  there  is 
nothing  new  under  the  sun."  Well,  so  be  it. 
Only  let  me  find  new  pleasure  in  the  old  places 
and  the  old  pursuits. 


A  DAY  IN  THE  WOODS 

I  WAS  well  within  the  truth  when  I  said,  a  week 
ago,  that  there  could  not  be  many  places  in  Flor- 
ida where  a  walking  man  would  find  his  wants 
so  generously  provided  for  as  at  Ormond.  Here 
he  may  spend  a  half  day  in  idling  over  a  round 
of  a  mile  or  two,  —  sea  beach,  river  bank,  and 
woodland,  —  or  he  may  foot  it  as  industriously 
as  he  pleases  from  morning  till  night ;  and  the 
next  day  and  the  day  after  he  will  have  plenty 
of  invitations  to  "  fresh  woods,"  though  hardly 
to  "pastures  new."  Pastures,  whether  new  or 
old,  he  may  look  for  elsewhere. 

But  at  Ormond  a  man  may  not  only  walk, 
he  may  drive ;  and  this  forenoon  (March  19)  a 
pair  of  horses  have  taken  me  over  such  a  road 
as  I  do  not  expect  soon  to  find  the  like  of,  either 
in  Florida  or  anywhere  else  ;  a  course  of  twelve 
or  fifteen  miles,  the  whole  of  it  (as  soon  as  the 
bridge  over  the  Halifax  was  crossed)  through 
most  beautiful  forest.  The  road  was  wide  enough 
for  the  carriage  and  no  more ;  soft  as  a  carpet, 
so  that  the  wheels  made  no  noise,  with  big  trunks 
of  pines,  palmettoes,  oaks,  sweet-gums,  magnolias, 


A  DAY  IN  THE  WOODS  143 

and  what  not  crowding  upon  the  track  so  closely 
that  we  could  almost  put  out  our  hands  and  touch 
them  as  we  passed.  In  the  whole  distance,  to 
the  best  of  my  recollection,  we  met  neither  car- 
riage nor  foot-passenger. 

We  drove  as  we  pleased,  stopped  as  we  pleased, 
talked  or  kept  silence,  listened  to  the  birds,  ad- 
mired the  flowers  and  the  new  leafage  (there  are 
no  words  wherewith  to  intimate  its  freshness  and 
beauty),  and  withal  dreamed  of  the  time  when  all 
the  land  about  us  was  the  scene  of  busy  labors, 
when  sugar  and  rice  and  cotton  were  cultivated 
here  by  hundreds  of  slaves,  and  those  who  owned 
the  land,  as  they  imagined,  had  no  thought  of  a 
day  when  the  forest  should  again  claim  all  their 
fair  possessions.  We  drove  to  Mount  Oswald,  so 
called,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Tomoka  River, 
thence  over  the  famous  old  causeway,  set  with 
palmettoes,  to  Buckhead  Bluff,  at  which  point  the 
King's  road  to  St.  Augustine  is  supposed  (or 
known)  to  have  crossed  the  river  a  hundred  years 
ago.  I  was  glad  to  see  the  river  (I  shall  see  more 
of  it,  if  I  live  a  day  or  two  longer),  but  the  great 
thing  was  the  forest,  with  its  present  beauty  and 
its  whisperings  of  past  romance. 

Now  it  is  afternoon,  and  I  am  in  the  same 
woods.  No  lover  of  wild  life  ever  drove  over  a 
beautiful  country  road  for  the  first  time  with- 


144  FLORIDA 

out  saying  to  himself  again  and  again,  "  I  must 
come  this  way  on  foot."  A  carriage  is  well 
enough  in  its  place,  but  really  to  see  things  a 
man  must  be  on  his  own  legs.  Immediately  after 
luncheon,  therefore,  with  a  merry  company  of 
golfers  (a  flourishing  sect  in  Florida),  I  took  the 
little  one-horse  street-car  to  the  railway  station, 
and  now,  having  crossed  a  narrow  field  and  left 
the  golfers  at  their  afternoon  devotions,  I  am 
in  the  Volusia  road,  in  the  noblest  of  hammock 
woods. 

The  first  half-mile  of  the  way  I  have  walked 
over  more  than  once  already,  and  having  in  mind 
the  shortness  of  the  afternoon  I  quicken  my  steps. 
The  doing  so  is  no  hardship.  For  the  last  forty- 
eight  hours  the  wind  has  blown  from  the  north ; 
during  the  night  the  mercury  settled  to  38°  ; 
and  though  it  is  considerably  warmer  than  that 
now,  a  pretty  brisk  movement  is  still  not  uncom- 
fortable. 

Here  I  pass  a  mournful  sight  —  an  old  orange 
grove,  of  which  nothing  remains  but  the  sandy 
soil  and  a  few  blackened  stumps.  The  "  great 
freeze  "  of  six  or  seven  years  ago  killed  the  trees 
to  the  roots.  Nearly  opposite,  to  add  to  the  for- 
lornness  of  the  impression,  stands  a  deserted 
house ;  and  not  far  along  is  another,  that  looks 
only  less  unthrifty  and  disconsolate,  with  an  old 


A  DAY  IN  THE  WOODS  145 

woman  smoking  a  pipe  on  the  piazza.  It  would 
be  a  strict  moralist  who  should  grudge  her  that 
one  comfort. 

Now  I  have  left  the  last  human  habitation  be- 
hind me,  and  in  front  stretches  the  narrow  road 
arched  with  greenness,  running  away  and  away 
till  it  runs  out  of  sight.  What  lofty  oaks  and 
sweet-gums !  And  what  beautiful  lichens  cover 
them  with  wise-looking  hieroglyphics !  If  we 
could  only  decipher  their  meaning  !  I  note  espe- 
cially the  ribbed,  muscular-seeming  trunks  of  the 
hornbeams,  one  of  which,  the  largest,  is  riddled 
with  uncountable  perforations,  the  work  of  some 
sap-loving  woodpecker  ;  and  I  turn  about  more 
than  once  to  admire  the  proportions  of  a  mag- 
nificent magnolia,  one  of  the  largest  I  have  ever 
seen.  My  thanks  to  the  highway  surveyor  who 
went  a  few  feet  out  of  his  way  to  leave  it  stand- 
ing. A  rod  or  two  more,  and  I  stop  to  look  up 
at  some  exceptionally  tall  pines  and  live-oaks,  a 
noticeable  group,  in  the  altitude  of  which  I  have 
before  found  a  pleasure. 

How  they  soar,  as  if  to  see  which  shall  go 
highest !  And  as  high  as  the  oak  branches  go,  so 
high  the  gray  moss  follows. 

Now  I  am  at  the  fork  of  the  road.  My  course 
is  to  the  right.  "  Old  Stage  Koad  to  Buckhead 
Bluff  on  the  Tomoka  Kiver  at  the  crossing  of 


146  FLORIDA 

the « old  King's  road '  to  St.  Augustine."  So  the 
guideboard  reads,  with  commendable  particular- 
ity. "  Old  "  is  the  word.  Even  the  wind  in  the 
tree-tops  seems  to  be  whispering  stories  of  things 
that  happened  long,  long  ago.  And  the  trees 
answer,  "  Yes,  so  the  fathers  have  told  us."  To 
think  of  all  those  busy  people !  And  every  one 
of  them  dead ! 

Here  is  a  bit  of  clearing  where  the  sun  strikes 
in.  It  feels  good.  This  is  the  right  kind  of  out- 
door weather  —  shade  not  uncomfortable  and 
the  sun's  heat  welcome.  A  white-eyed  chewink, 
happy  Floridian,  is  whistling  from  the  brush. 
Holly  trees  are  common,  and  the  sweet -bay  is 
everywhere.  Its  shining  leaves  are  of  a  most 
salubrious  odor,  as  if  they  might  be  for  the  heal- 
ing of  the  nations.  I  am  continually  plucking 
them  and  rolling  them  in  my  fingers. 

And  yonder  is  the  maker  of  the  clearing  —  a 
colored  man,  standing  beside  a  woodpile.  I  hail 
him  to  remark  that  it  is  a  fine  day,  and  he  an- 
swers, "  Yes,  very  nice."  Strange  that  when  two 
men  meet  for  the  only  time  in  their  lives  they 
should  find  nothing  more  important  to  communi- 
cate than  that  it  rains,  or  that  the  sun  is  shining. 
But  weather  is  the  thing,  after  all,  especially  in 
Florida.  Perhaps  it  deserves  all  that  is  said  about 
it.  Anyhow,  the  woodcutter  and  the  stroller  have 


A  DAY  IN  THE  WOODS  147 

expressed  a  feeling  of  neighborliness  and  have 
told  each  other  no  lies. 

With  every  rod  the  wood  changes  from  glory 
to  glory.  I  remark  with  special  joy  a  grove  of 
tall,  slender,  smooth-barked  water-oaks,  every 
one  in  new  leaf.  Height  rather  than  girth  is  their 
aim.  "  We  must  have  the  sun,"  they  say,  "  and 
we  climb  to  get  it."  How  good  the  sun  is,  let 
their  leaves  testify ;  those  millions  on  millions  of 
shining  leaves,  every  one  new.  Yes,  every  one 
new.  I  cannot  write  the  word  too  often.  And 
many  times  as  I  write  it,  the  Northern  reader 
will  have  but  an  insufficient  sense  of  its  meaning. 
Such  freshness  and  greenness !  Neither  memory 
nor  imagination  can  body  it  forth.  Happy  are 
the  eyes  that  behold  the  miracle  twice  in  a  single 
spring.  It  is  like  doubling  one's  year. 

A  Carolina  wren  whistles,  near  at  hand,  but 
invisible  (invisibility  is  the  wren's  trick),  and  a 
red-eyed  vireo,  farther  away,  has  begun  his  reit- 
erative, summer-long  exhortation.  I  was  taken  by 
surprise,  two  or  three  days  ago,  when  I  heard  the 
first  of  his  kind  in  this  same  hammock ;  I  was  not 
looking  for  him  so  early.  His  irrepressible  cousin, 
the  white-eye,  has  been  abundantly  vocal  for  at 
least  two  months.  At  this  very  minute  one  is  re- 
hearsing a  strain  with  a  pretty  and  decidedly  origi- 
nal quirk  at  the  end.  And,  by  the  by,  I  notice 


148  FLORIDA 

that  many  white-eyes  hereabout  practice  a  decep- 
tive imitation  of  the  crested  flycatcher's  loud 
whistle,  while  others,  or  perhaps  the  same  ones, 
sometimes  begin  with  a  broken  measure,  such  as 
I  think  I  never  heard  from  a  Massachusetts  white- 
eye,  strongly  suggestive  of  the  summer  tanager. 
Call  him  pert,  saucy,  a  chatter-box,  Old  Volubil- 
ity, what  you  will,  the  white-eye  is  indisputably 
a  genius. 

But  for  to-day,  and  for  me,  none  of  the  birds 
sing  quite  so  feelingly  or  so  well  as  the  wind  in 
the  tree-tops.  I  stop  again  and  again  to  listen  to 
it,  and  would  stop  of tener  still  but  for  the  brevity 
of  the  afternoon  and  the  uncertainty  I  am  in  as 
to  the  length  of  the  walk  before  me. 

Hickory  nuts,  split  in  halves  and  lying  black- 
ened in  the  sand,  lead  me  to  look  upward.  Yes, 
there  are  the  trees,  still  with  bare  boughs.  Their 
tender  leafage  does  well  to  be  late  in  sprouting, 
even  in  this  Southern  country.  There  is  no  tree 
but  knows  a  thing  or  two.  Every  kind  has  a  wis- 
dom of  its  own.  JExperientia  docet  is  true  of 
them  as  of  us. 

And  now  I  suddenly  find  myself  nearing  the 
railroad,  and  having  consulted  my  watch  con- 
clude to  go  back  over  the  sleepers.  It  will  be  my 
shortest  course,  and  will  have  the  further  advan- 
tage of  taking  me  past  a  swamp,  on  the  edge  of 


A  DAY  IN  THE  WOODS  149 

which  I  caught  glimpses  of  sora  rails  a  few  days 
ago.  This  time  I  will  be  more  cautious  in  my 
approaches. 

A  cardinal  is  whistling,  a  checker-back  is 
chattering,  many  warblers  are  in  the  sunny  tree- 
tops,  and  from  somewhere  in  the  depths  of  the 
forest  comes  the  deep,  oracular  voice  of  an  owl, 
though  the  sun  is  at  least  half  an  hour  high. 
Whoo,  whoo,  who-who,  he  calls.  I  love  to  hear 
him.  On  the  wire  fence  is  a  yellow  jessamine 
vine,  still  sporting  a  few  last  blossoms,  and  for 
rods  together  the  sandy  railway  embankment  is 
draped  with  exquisite  white  "bramble  roses," 
the  flowers  of  the  creeping  blackberry.  Later 
comers  will  find  berries  on  the  vines,  but  per- 
haps I  have  the  better  part  of  the  crop. 

I  am  well  satisfied,  at  all  events,  and  am  still 
feasting  upon  the  sight  when  out  of  the  tall  grass 
on  my  left  hand  comes  a  rail's  voice  —  the  voice 
of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness.  I  am  drawing 
near  the  swamp,  and  make  haste  to  cover  with 
my  field-glass  the  spaces  of  open  water  among 
the  dead  flags.  Yes,  there  are  birds  —  one,  two, 
three,  four.  But  they  are  not  rails.  I  see  as 
much  as  that  before  I  have  finished  my  count. 
Three  of  them  are  swimming.  They  are  galli- 
nules  ;  and  when  one  of  them  turns,  and  the  sun- 
light strikes  him,  I  see  the  red  plate  on  his  fore- 


160  FLORIDA 

head.  They  are  Florida  gallinules,  my  first  ones 
for  nine  years.  My  glass  follows  their  movements 
jealously  till  the  thunder  of  an  approaching  train 
startles  them  and  they  fly  to  the  shelter  of  the 
tall  grass.  I  shall  come  this  way  again,  and  not 
only  see  but  hear  them.  Their  language  is  vari- 
ous and  interesting,  though  most  of  it  has  the 
accent  of  the  barnyard. 

A  pileated  woodpecker  crosses  the  track  just 
before  me,  with  all  his  colors  flying,  a  pair  of 
bluebirds  sit  in  their  accustomed  place  upon  the 
telegraph  wire,  and  from  the  neighboring  pines 
I  catch  the  finch-like  twitters  of  a  brown-headed 
nuthatch.  This  is  close  upon  the  railway  station 
and  the  golf  links.  My  afternoon  is  done,  but 
the  golf  players  are  still  making  the  most  of  day- 
light. I  blush  to  confess  it,  but  there  are  some 
enthusiasms  with  which  even  that  of  a  strolling 
naturalist  will  hardly  endure  comparison. 


PICTUKE  AND  SONG 

WHAT  seek  we  in  Florida  ?  The  same  that  we 
seek  everywhere  —  sensations.  Life  is  made  of 
them.  In  proportion  as  they  are  lively  and 
pleasurable  we  find  it  good.  The  higher  their 
quality,  the  nobler  the  part  that  feels  them,  the 
less  physical  they  are,  the  less  they  have  to  do 
with  eating  and  drinking  and  being  clothed,  the 
more  truly  we  are  alive  and  not  dead. 

Most  of  the  people  that  we  meet  in  Florida 
are  vacationers  like  ourselves.  At  home  they 
may  be  in  the  wool  business,  in  shoes,  or  in 
dyestuffs ;  here  they  have  no  occupation  but  to 
amuse  themselves.  In  the  daytime  they  fish, 
play  golf,  drive,  or  lounge  upon  the  hotel  piazza. 
In  the  evening  they  sit  in  the  lobby,  listen 
(possibly)  to  the  music,  admire  (or  not)  the 
gowns  and  jewels  of  the  ladies  (the  self-sacrific- 
ing creatures  are  all  on  parade,  like  so  many 
Queens  of  Sheba),  take  a  hand  at  cards,  or 
gossip  about  something  or  nothing  with  a  travel- 
ing companion  or  a  chance  acquaintance.  At 
the  worst  they  dawdle  over  a  newspaper  or  a 
novel,  and  consume  the  hour  in  smoke.  To 


152  FLORIDA 

judge  by  appearances  their  sensations  are  not 
poignant,  though  the  anglers  and  the  golfers, 
and  even  the  shuffle-board  players,  no  doubt 
have,  their  exciting  moments ;  but  on  the  whole 
the  winter  passes  rather  quickly.  When  there 
is  nothing  else  to  do,  and  the  time  drags,  one 
can  always  cheer  one's  self  by  thinking  how 
intemperate  the  season  is  at  home.  The  most 
refreshing  parts  of  the  Northern  newspapers  are 
their  reports  of  snowstorms  and  blizzards. 

For  my  own  part,  I  admire  the  ladies'  gowns 
(in  one  sense  or  other  of  the  word,  who  could 
help  it  ?),  but  what  my  untutored  mind  is  most 
taken  with  is  the  beauty  of  the  natural  world, 
the  world  as  God  made  it,  rather  than  as  man, 
even  the  man-milliner,  has  improved  it.  I  love 
to  look  up  or  down  the  moss-hung  vista  of  the 
river  road  (I  am  still  at  Ormond),  or,  turning 
my  head,  to  gaze  across  the  smooth  water  at  the 
freshly  green,  happy-looking  oak  woods  and  the 
overtopping  pines.  These  are  pictures  that  I 
hope  never  to  forget. 

The  other  day  an  old  friend,  a  settler  in  these 
parts,  rowed  me  down  the  river  a  few  miles. 
There  we  took  an  untraveled  road  through  the 
forest,  and  by  and  by  came  suddenly  to  a  clear- 
ing, in  the  middle  of  which  stood  an  abandoned 
house.  The  place  had  once  been  an  orange 


PICTURE  AND  SONG  153 

orchard,  I  suppose;  and  even  now,  although 
there  was  hardly  so  much  as  a  stump  left  to  tell 
the  tale,  it  remained  in  its  own  way  a  paradise 
of  beauty.  From  end  to  end  the  five  or  six 
sandy  acres  were  thickly  overgrown  with  Drum- 
mond's  phlox,  all  in  fullest  bloom,  a  rosy  wilder- 
ness. 

It  was  a  pretty  show.  "We  exclaimed  over  it, 
and  gathered  handfuls  of  the  lovely  flowers,  but 
as  we  rowed  homeward  we  were  favored  with  a 
spectacle  to  which  it  would  be  a  profanation  to 
apply  such  epithets.  The  afternoon,  which  began 
doubtfully,  had  turned  out  a  marvel  of  perfec- 
tion. The  wind  had  gone  down,  the  river  was 
like  glass,  and  the  level  rays  of  the  sun  touched 
all  the  shore  woods  to  an  almost  unearthly 
beauty.  And  withal,  the  sky  was  full  of  the 
softest,  most  exquisitely  shaded,  finely  broken 
clouds.  It  was  an  hour  such  as  comes  once  and 
is  never  repeated.  In  my  mind  the  memory  of 
it  has  already  taken  its  place  beside  the  memory 
of  a  sunset  seen  many  years  ago  from  a  Massa- 
chusetts mountain-top.  These  are  some  of  the 
"  sensations  "  of  which  I  spoke.  They  are  the 
sufficient  rewards  of  travel,  though  now  and 
then,  the  Fates  favoring,  we  may  have  them  at 
home  also,  without  money  and  without  price. 

The  next  day,  or  the  next  but  one,  I  strolled 


154  FLORIDA 

about  two  miles  up  the  river  northward,  to  the 
house  where,  on  my  first  day  at  Ormond,  I  had 
seen  a  Cherokee  rosebush  just  breaking  into 
flower.  This  time  it  was  at  the  top  of  its  glory, 
such  a  glory  as^I  have  no  hope  of  describing. 
At  a  moderate  calculation  the  mound  of  leafy 
stems  must  have  borne  four  or  five  thousand 
roses,  every  one  the  very  image  of  purity  and 
sweetness.  Those  who  are  familiar  with  the 
Cherokee  rose  will  perhaps  be  able  to  imagine 
the  picture  of  loveliness  here  presented ;  and 
such  readers  will  be  glad  to  know  that  a  lover  of 
beauty  (not  an  idle,  time-killing  tourist,  but  a 
man  at  home  and  at  work),  having  heard  my 
report  of  the  bush,  walked  four  or  five  miles  on 
purpose  to  see  it,  and  declared  himself  amply 
repaid  for  his  labor.  "  The  poetry  of  earth  is 
never  dead ;  "  and  there  is  never  wanting  some 
poet's  soul  to  enjoy  it,  and  so  to  make  it  twice 
alive. 

Though  it  is  near  the  end  of  March  there  is 
comparatively  little  sign  of  bird  migration. 
Chuck-wilTs-widows  —  Southern  whippoorwills, 
if  one  chooses  to  call  them  so  —  have  arrived 
and  are  abundantly  in  voice.  The  nights  are 
scarcely  long  enough  for  all  they  have  to  say.  I 
hear  of  a  cottager  who  is  awakened  by  one  so 
persistently  and  so  early  in  the  morning  that  he 


PICTURE  AND  SONG  155 

is  devising  means  to  kill  it.  I  hope  he  will  not 
succeed,  although  if  the  bird  is  close  to  his  open 
window  and  begins  to  unburden  himself  at  half- 
past  two,  as  one  does  within  hearing  from  my 
bed,  I  cannot  very  seriously  blame  him  for  the 
attempt.  He  goes  out  in  his  night-clothes,  I  am 
told,  and  tries  to  "  shoo  "  it  away ;  but  the  bird 
has  a  message,  as  truly  as  Poe's  raven,  and  is 
bound  to  deliver  it,  whether  men  will  hear  or 
forbear. 

On  the  morning  of  March  26,  in  an  ante- 
breakfast  stroll,  I  found  among  the  pines  imme- 
diately in  the  rear  of  the  hotel  the  first  summer 
tanager  of  the  season.  The  splendid  creature, 
bright  red  throughout,  was  flitting  from  tree  to 
tree,  singing  a  measure  or  two  from  each.  He 
acted  as  if  he  were  happy  to  be  back  in  Ormond, 
and  I  did  not  wonder.  A  red-eyed  vireo  was 
singing  on  the  15th,  and  since  then  birds  of  the 
same  kind  have  become  moderately  common. 
Considering  that  the  red-eye  is  not  supposed  to 
winter  anywhere  in  the  United  States  (I  saw 
nothing  of  it  at  Miami),  and  arrives  so  late  in 
New  England,  it  seems  to  have  reached  Ormond 
surprisingly  early. 

For  some  time  the  woods  have  been  alive  in 
spots  with  busy  crowds  of  warblers.  Parulas  es- 
pecially have  been  present  in  enormous  force, 


156  FLORIDA 

and  have  sung  literally  in  chorus.  I  have  seen 
many  yellow-throated  warblers  also,  and  many 
myrtles,  with  a  fair  sprinkling  of  prairies  and 
black-and-white  creepers.  But  the  birds  that 
have  sung  best  —  after  the  mocker  and  the 
thrasher,  perhaps  —  are  not  spring  comers,  but 
our  faithful  winter  friends,  the  cardinal  grosbeak 
and  the  Carolina  wren.  Indeed,  of  all  Southern 
songsters  I  believe  that  the  cardinal  stands  first 
in  my  affections.  Sweetness,  tenderness,  affec- 
tionateness,  and  variety,  these  are  his  gifts,  and 
they  are  good  ones,  even  if  they  are  not  the 
highest. 

Out  in  the  flatwoods,  a  few  days  ago,  we  sud- 
denly heard,  coming  from  a  thicket  of  dwarf  pal- 
metto on  the  edge  of  water,  a  quite  unexpected 
strain,  a  loud,  short  trill.  ."What  was  that?" 
asked  my  companions,  as  we  looked  at  one  an- 
other ;  for  there  were  three  pairs  of  field-glasses 
in  the  carriage.  "  It  sounded  like  a  swamp  spar- 
row," said  I,  with  doubt  in  my  voice.  At  that 
moment  the  measure  was  given  out  again,  pre- 
faced this  time  by  a  peculiar  indrawn  whistle. 
Then  the  truth  flashed  upon  me.  It  was  the  song 
of  a  pine-wood  sparrow.  I  had  not  heard  it  for 
many  years.  In  the  same  place  meadow  larks 
were  in  tune,  bluebirds  warbled,  and  pine  war- 
blers and  brown-headed  nuthatches  were  in  voice 


PICTURE  AND  SONG  157 

among  the  pine  trees.  Here,  too,  I  was  glad  to 
hear,  for  the  first  time  in  Florida,  the  caw  of  a 
real  crow,  a  bird  with  a  roof  to  his  mouth  and  a 
voice  that  sounded  like  home. 

Such  are  some  of  a  bird-loving  man's  early 
spring  pleasures  in  this  Southern  country.  I  do 
not  mean  to  praise  the  season  unduly.  New  Eng- 
land can  beat  it  when  the  time  comes ;  at  least, 
I  know  one  New  Englander  who  thinks  so  ;  but 
not  in  March. 


TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 


IN  OLD  SAN  ANTONIO 

AFTER  three  days  and  four  nights  in  a  sleeping- 
car  it  is  good  to  breathe  air  again.  Not  that  I 
mean  to  speak  ill  of  the  modern  necessity  known 
in  railway  offices  as  a  "  sleeper  " ;  it  has  done 
me  too  many  a  service ;  but,  for  all  that,  — 
though  it  is  a  bridge  that  has  carried  me  over, 
—  well,  as  I  said,  it  is  a  luxury  to  breathe  air 
again. 

So  I  thought  this  January  afternoon  as  I  sat 
upon  the  top  rail  (a  pretty  thin  board)  of  a  tall 
fence  at  the  summit  of  what  I  take  to  be  one  of 
the  highest  elevations  (it  would  be  exceeding  the 
truth,  perhaps,  to  call  it  a  hill)  in  the  immediate 
neighborhood  of  this  venerable  but  young  and 
vigorous  Texas  city,  known  in  geographies  and 
gazetteers  as  San  Antonio,  but  among  railroad 
men,  with  whom  time  and  breath  are  precious, 
as  "  San  Antone." 

The  city  itself  lay  all  before  me,  and  an  excel- 
lent showing  it  made,  with  its  many  stately  and 
handsome  buildings  and  its  general  air  of  pros- 
perity ;  but  for  the  most  part  my  eyes  traveled 
beyond  it,  or  in  other  directions.  The  landscape 


162  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

was  wide,  whichever  way  I  turned,  and  the  trans- 
parency of  the  atmosphere,  of  a  kind  never  en- 
joyed in  New  England  except  on  some  half-dozen 
days  in  a  year,  made  it  the  wider  and  more  al- 
luring. It  surprised  me  to  see  imposing  public 
buildings  scattered  about  over  the  country.  The 
nearest  must  have  been  several  miles  from  the 
town,  and  each,  so  far  as  I  could  see,  stood  en- 
tirely by  itself.  Here  and  there,  also,  miles 
apart,  were  fine  dwelling-houses,  with  outbuild- 
ings and  windmills ;  each,  like  the  public  insti- 
tutions just  mentioned,  standing  alone,  as  if  its 
proprietor  were  also  the  proprietor  of  the  entire 
tract  of  country  roundabout.  Rich  men's  ranches, 
they  should  perhaps  be  called.  All  these,  or 
most  of  them,  would  have  been  invisible  from 
my  fence-rail  perch,  but  for  the  fact,  which  really 
made  the  strangeness  of  the  whole  spectacle  to  a 
New  England  man's  eyes,  that  the  rolling  land 
is  all  unwooded  —  a  broad  landscape,  stretching 
away  and  away,  north,  south,  east,  and  west,  and 
no  forest !  The  slopes  look,  at  a  little  distance, 
—  just  as  the  one  on  which  I  was  now  sitting 
had  looked  to  me  half  a  mile  back,  —  as  if  they 
might  be  planted  with  young  peach  orchards. 
They  are  really  covered  loosely  with  wild  shrubs 
ten  or  fifteen  feet  high,  now  budded  and  in  pale 
green  leaf  (Huisache,  I  understand  their  Mexican 


IN  OLD  SAN  ANTONIO  163 

name  to  be,1  though  I  may  err  in  the  spelling), 
with  lower  shrubs  of  different  sorts,  mostly 
thorny,  scattered  loosely  among  them,  the  whole 
constituting  (or  so  I  suppose)  what  is  known  in 
this  part  of  the  world  as  chaparral;  which  is 
very  like  what  in  our  Northern  country  we  speak 
of,  less  respectfully,  as  "  scrub." 

It  is  a  godsend  to  a  man  on  my  errand,  that 
chaparral,  as  it  grows  about  San  Antonio,  at  all 
events,  is  not  a  dense  thicket.  It  can  be  walked 
through  or  ridden  through  in  all  directions  with 
perfect  ease,  though  one  cannot  keep  a  straight 
course  for  more  than  a  rod  or  two  together. 

I  had  been  strolling  over  exactly  such  a  hill 
half  an  hour  before,  circling  one  cluster  of  shrubs 
after  another,  opera-glass  in  hand,  on  the  alert 
for  any  bird  that  might  show  itself  (it  was  likely 
as  not  to  be  a  stranger),  when  all  at  once  —  how 
it  came  about  I  shall  never  be  able  to  tell  — there, 
just  before  me  on  the  ground,  twenty  or  thirty 
feet  away,  stood  one  of  the  birds  that  I  had 
most  desired  to  see  in  this  novel  Southwestern 
world  —  a  road-runner.  I  have  found  some  puz- 
zles since  my  arrival  at  San  Antonio,  three  days 
ago,  but  this  was  not  one  of  them.  As  our  good 
common  saying  is,  the  fellow  looked  "  as  natural 

1  Vachellia  Farnesiana,  sparingly  naturalized   in  Florida, 
where  it  goes  by  the  name  of  Opopanax. 


164  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

as  life."  Mr.  Fuertes's  drawing  had  stepped  out 
of  the  book.  I  could  have  shouted  with  pleasure. 

The  bird  was  true  to  his  name.  There  was  no 
road,  to  be  sure,  but  he  knew  what  was  expected 
of  him,  and  started  off  at  once  at  a  lively  trot ; 
then,  within  ten  or  fifteen  feet,  he  stopped  short, 
lifted  his  ridiculously  long  tail  till  it  stood  at 
right  angles  with  his  body,  —  the  white  "  thumb- 
marks"  at  the  ends  of  the  feathers  making  a 
brave  show,  in  spite  of  the  almost  indecent  absurd- 
ity of  his  attitude,  —  and  after  a  moment  started 
on  again.  Two  or  three  times  he  repeated  these 
manoeuvres ;  and  then,  without  my  knowing  how 
he  did  it,  he  escaped  me  altogether,  although  the 
bit  of  shrubbery  into  which  he  had  vanished  was 
only  a  few  feet  in  diameter.  "  Never  mind,"  I 
thought,  "  I  have  seen  him."  And  he  was  every 
whit  as  oddly  behaved  a  piece  as  my  fancy  had 
painted  him. 

The  road-runner,  it  should  be  said,  is  an  over- 
grown member  of  the  cuckoo  family.  Its  length 
from  the  tip  of  its  bill  to  the  end  of  its  tail  is 
about  two  feet.  It  wears  what  may  be  described 
as  a  frightened-looking  crest,  its  plumage  is  con- 
spicuously mottled,  and,  what  gives  it  its  special 
character,  its  tail  is  a  foot  long.  As  Mrs.  Bailey 
well  says,  it  is  "  one  of  the  most  original  and 
entertaining  of  Western  birds.  The  newcomer 


IN  OLD  SAN  ANTONIO  165 

is  amazed  when  the  long-tailed  creature  darts 
out  of  the  brush  and  races  the  horses  down  the 
road,  easily  keeping  ahead  as  they  trot,  and 
when  tired  turns  out  into  the  brush  and  throws 
his  tail  over  his  back  to  stop  himself." 

My  bird's  performance  was  less  theatrical  than 
that,  perhaps  because  I  was  on  foot,  perhaps  be- 
cause the  day  was  Sunday,  perhaps  because  of  the 
absence  of  a  thoroughfare ;  but  I  was  well  pleased. 

It  is  noticeable  how  birds,  not  less  than  men, 
tend  to  become  specialists.  To  accomplish  one 
thing  supremely  well,  —  that  is  certainly  the  way 
to  make  one's  self  famous.  And  that  is  what  the 
road-runner  does.  He  has  chosen  a  hobby,  and 
he  rides  it.  His  legs  are  proportionally  no  longer 
than  other  birds',  but  that  does  not  matter.  Such 
as  they  are,  he  will  make  the  most  of  them. 

He  is  like  a  certain  Maine  farmer  of  whom  I 
have  heard,  a  plain  tiller  of  the  soil,  who  feels, 
nevertheless,  that  he  was  born  for  better  things ; 
not  for  a  cart-horse,  if  you  please,  but  for  a  race- 
horse. He  may  be  working  on  his  farm,  at  the 
plough,  we  will  say ;  suddenly  the  impulse  comes 
upon  him,  as  inspiration  is  said  to  come  upon  a 
poet ;  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  he  must  start 
and  run ;  and  so  he  does.  Once  every  summer 
he  travels  from  Maine  to  Mount  Washington, 
for  the  great  event  of  the  year.  When  he  ap- 


166  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

pears  at  the  Summit  House,  every  one  knows 
what  is  to  happen.  So-and-so  is  going  to  run 
down  the  mountain.  The  daily  newspaper  chroni- 
cles his  arrival  and  announces  the  hour  of  the 
annual  event.  Then,  at  the  minute  agreed  upon, 
all  hands  gather  before  the  door,  a  man  ap- 
pointed for  the  purpose  holds  the  watch  and 
gives  the  signal,  and  down  the  steep  road  starts 
the  farmer,  his  invariable  "tall  hat"  on  his 
head,  and  his  coat-tails  flying.  At  the  Half- Way 
House,  and  again  at  the  base,  his  time  is  taken. 
If  it  is  shorter  than  last  year's,  so  much  the 
more  glory.  If  it  is  longer,  —  well,  he  has  run ; 
and  presumably,  like  Cincinnatus  before  him,  he 
goes  back  to  his  plough  contented. 

The  road-runner,  I  suspect  (the  running 
cuckoo!),  is  subject  to  the  same  irresistible 
ambulatory  impulses,  and  by  a  curious  coinci- 
dence he,  too,  wears  what  we  may  term  a  "  tall 
hat."  I  should  like  to  see  him  racing  down  the 
Mount  Washington  road,  putting  on  the  brakes 
now  and  then,  at  the  sharper  turns,  by  a  sudden 
cocking  of  his  tail ! 

The  temperature  here  —  for  temperature  must 
always  be  mentioned  in  writing  of  one's  travels 
—  has  thus  far  been  pretty  comfortable  for  a 
walker,  though  not  without  something  of  the  con- 
tradictoriness  which  seems  to  belong  to  weather 


IN  OLD  SAN  ANTONIO  167 

conditions  everywhere  and  always :  roses  in  all 
the  gardens,  and  steam  in  the  radiators ;  chil- 
dren, black  and  white,  paddling  about  in  the 
mud  barefooted  and  barelegged,  and  gentlemen 
with  heavy  overcoats  on,  and,  not  unlikely,  collars 
turned  up.  Concerning  such  things,  here  in 
"  San  Antone,"  you  take  your  choice.  For  my- 
self I  have  compromised  the  matter,  keeping  my 
boots  on  and  wearing,  except  when  the  sun  has 
been  more  than  commonly  persuasive,  the  light- 
est of  spring  overcoats. 

The  great  drawback  to  a  walking  man's  com- 
fort, and  just  now  the  most  impressive  "  feature  " 
of  the  city, — more  impressive  by  far  than  the  old 
Spanish  missions,  the  most  famous  of  which,  the 
Alamo,  is  directly  at  my  door,  —  has  been  the 
mud ;  deep  and  black,  and  more  adhesive  than  glue. 
If  you  go  outside  the  city  your  shoes  gather  it 
as  a  rolling  snowball  gathers  snow  ("  to  him  that 
hath  shall  be  given,"  you  repeat  to  yourself), 
and  it  is  like  one  of  the  labors  of  Hercules  to 
get  it  off.  I  walk  about,  scuffing  and  kicking, 
with  pounds  of  it  on  either  overshoe,  like  a  dark 
fringe,  and  fancy  I  know  how  it  feels  to  drag  a 
ball  and  chain.  However,  conditions  are  better- 
ing in  this  respect,  and  in  any  case,  things  might 
easily  be  worse.  Yesterday  morning,  seeing  the 
sky  clouded,  I  remarked  to  the  elevator  boy  on 


168  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

my  way  down  to  breakfast,  that  I  believed  it 
was  going  to  rain ;  and  I  added,  sententiously, 
"  More  rain,  more  mud."  "  Yes,"  said  the  boy, 
quick  to  resent  an  imputation  upon  the  climate 
of  Texas,  "  and  the  more  rain,  the  better  crops." 
The  State,  it  appears,  has  suffered  greatly  from 
drought  for  the  past  few  seasons,  and  no  doubt 
its  people  can  well  afford  to  play  the  mud-lark 
for  a  week  now  and  then  in  winter.  It  makes  a 
difference  whether  you  are  a  selfish,  pleasure- 
seeking  tourist,  thinking  only  of  to-day's  com- 
fort, or  a  man  with  his  living  to  make  out  of  a 
cotton  plantation  or  a  market  garden. 

For  the  present,  if  the  tourist  wishes,  as  I  do, 
to  walk  in  the  country,  he  may  do  worse  than 
betake  himself  to  one  of  the  numerous  railroad 
tracks.1  These  have  carried  me  into  good  places 
and  shown  me  many  interesting  birds ;  but  they 
would  be  more  convenient  if  they  were  not  walled 
in,  mile  after  mile,  except  as  a  highway  or  a  plan- 
tation road  crosses  them,  by  an  excessively  high 
and  close  barbed-wire  fence.  Yet  even  this  hate- 
ful obstruction  has  served  me  one  slight  good  turn. 

A  man  of  something  like  my  own  age  and  build 

1  Since  this  letter  was  first  printed  I  have  been  warned  more 
than  once  that  walking  upon  railroad  tracks,  in  the  South- 
western country,  at  least,  is  an  unsafe  proceeding1,  for  a  man 
alone  and  unarmed;  and  I  think  it  right  to  pass  along  the 
caution. 


IN  OLD  SAN  ANTONIO  169 

was  trudging  along  the  track  in  front  of  me,  a 
day  or  two  ago  (by  his  gait  and  general  appear- 
ance he  was  used  to  trudging),  when  I  saw  him  ap- 
proach the  fence  as  if  he  meant  in  some  way  to 
force  a  passage.  "  You  '11  never  do  it,"  I  thought. 
Eeally,  there  seemed  not  to  be  space  enough 
between  the  wires,  even  if  they  had  not  been 
barbed,  for  a  human  body  to  squeeze  through ; 
but  to  my  astonishment  the  fellow  slipped  be- 
tween them  without  the  slightest  fumbling  or 
hesitation,  and  without  so  much  as  a  barb's 
touching  him.  He  must  have  been  a  specialist,  I 
am  sure.  I  could  not  have  followed  suit  without 
tearing  my  clothing  to  tatters,  if  all  the  wealth  of 
the  East,  "  barbaric  pearl  and  gold,"  had  been 
spread  out  before  my  itching  fingers  on  the  far- 
ther side.  I  have  not  yet  ceased  wondering  at  the 
rogue's  address.  Such  practice  as  he  must  have 
had !  I  hope  he  was  never  in  jail.  It  was  like 
the  neatest  of  Japanese  jugglery,  or  the  famous 
passage  through  the  eye  of  a  needle.  Behold, 
said  I,  the  compensations  of  poverty.  No  rich 
man  could  have  done  it. 

The  greater  part  of  the  passengers  that  one 
meets  in  such  out-of-the-way  places  are  short, 
swarthy  Mexicans.  Usually  they  are  able  to  bid 
you  "  good-morning,"  or  to  ask  how  you  "  do," 
but  now  and  then  you  will  hear  a  "  buenos  dias." 


170  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

In  the  city  one  finds  them  at  every  corner  selling 
peculiar-looking  confections.  Whether  one  likes 
their  wares  or  not,  —  and  for  myself,  I  must  con- 
fess that  "my  own  particular  lip"  has  not  yet 
made  up  its  mind  to  try  the  experiment,  —  their 
presence  gives  one  an  agreeable  sense  of  being 
far  from  home.  Two  days  ago  I  was  wander- 
ing about  San  Pedro  Park  at  noon,  and  noticed 
for  the  first  time  a  few  butterflies  on  the  wing. 
Most  of  them  were  much  like  our  common  yellow 
one,  —  evidently  some  species  of  Colias,  —  but 
by  and  by  I  noticed  a  dark  one,  showing  a  touch 
of  red  as  it  flew.  I  took  chase,  and  came  up  with 
it  just  as  it  dropped  to  rest  directly  in  front  of 
two  Mexicans  seated  upon  the  grass.  I  stepped 
near  to  see  it  (a  common  red  admiral,  for  aught 
I  could  discover),  and  perceiving  that  the  men 
were  inquisitive,  I  pointed  to  it  with  my  finger. 
One  of  them  imitated  the  gesture,  as  much  as  to 
say  "  That,  do  you  mean  ?  "  I  nodded,  and  he 
said,  with  a  smile,  "  Mariposa."  "  Yes,"  said  I, 
"  a  butterfly."  That  was  beyond  him,  and  he  re- 
peated his  incomparably  prettier  word,  "  mari- 
posa"  "Very  good,"  said  I  to  myself,  "  I  am  glad 
to  find  that  I  understand  Spanish  when  I  hear  it 
spoken !  "  A  solitary  traveler,  of  all  men,  should 
know  how  to  amuse  himself  with  trifles. 


A  BIRD-GAZER'S  PUZZLES 

THE  days  of  my  youth  have  come  back  to  me.  I 
am  again  at  the  foot  of  the  ladder,  a  boy  in  the 
primary  school,  a  speller  of  a-b-abs.  The  experi- 
ence is  pleasant,  but  not  unmixedly  so;  it  is 
sweet,  with  a  suggestion  of  bitter.  I  am  finding 
out  daily  that  one  is  never  too  old  to  be  mis- 
taken. I  knew  it  before,  of  course;  but  I  am 
still  finding  it  out ;  for  the  two  things  are  not 
incompatible.  One  may  know  a  thing,  and  still 
have  need  to  learn  it.  It  is  possible  that  the 
most  erudite  scholar  has  never  more  than  begun 
to  apprehend  his  own  ignorance ;  nay,  that  he 
would  never  make  more  than  a  beginning  in  that 
salutary  study  were  he  to  burn  the  midnight  oil 
for  a  thousand  years.  In  that  time  he  might 
square  the  circle  and  discover  the  philosopher's 
stone,  but  he  would  not  discover  how  little  he 
knew.  In  that  respect,  in  respect  to  what  we  do 
not  know,  human  capacity  is  unlimited.  Finite 
creatures  that  we  are,  we  are  endowed  with  a 
kind  of  negative  infinity.  And,  for  one,  I  wish  to 
make  the  most  of  my  greatest  gift.  It  shall  not 
be  "  lodged  with  me  useless,"  if  I  can  help  it. 


172  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

I  saw  a  strange  warbler  the  other  day.  That 
is  to  say,  I  thought  I  saw  one.  I  had  been  wan- 
dering for  a  whole  forenoon  amid  the  chaparral 
just  outside  the  city  of  San  Antonio,  and  had 
enjoyed  a  good  number  of  novel  sensations,  when 
suddenly  (such  things  always  come  suddenly,  but 
it  seems  necessary  to  repeat  the  word)  a  tiny 
bird  moved  in  a  low  bush  directly  before  me. 
"  A  gray  warbler  with  no  wing-marks,"  I  said ; 
and  the  next  instant  I  saw  that  its  crown  was 
light  yellow.  It  moved  again,  and  the  forward 
parts  came  into  view.  Its  throat  also  was  yellow. 
At  that  moment  it  was  eating  a  yellow  berry. 
Its  ground  color  was  near  the  shade  worn  by  a 
juvenile  chestnut-sided  warbler,  and  the  yellow 
of  the  crown  and  throat  was  very  lightly  laid  on 
over  the  gray,  so  to  express  it,  just  as  it  is  in  the 
chestnut-side's  case. 

Now  what  kind  of  warbler  can  this  be?  I 
asked  myself :  a  gray  warbler  with  a  yellow  crown 
and  a  yellow  throat,  and  no  other  adornments. 
And  with  the  question  there  came  into  my  mind, 
as  by  the  effect  of  immediate  inspiration,  the 
word  Calaveras.  Whether  it  was  Calaveras  or 
something  else,  there  could  be  no  doubt  of  my 
being  able  to  clear  up  the  question,  once  I  should 
have  a  book  in  my  hand. 

I  resumed  my  peregrinations,  therefore,  the 


A  BIRD-GAZER'S   PUZZLES  173 

bird  having  moved  on,  as  birds  do,  being  pro- 
vided with  wings  for  that  very  purpose,  and  by 
and  by,  walking  at  a  venture  round  one  clump 
of  bushes  after  another,  I  came  again  upon  the 
stranger,  who,  it  should  be  said,  was  of  a  pecul- 
iarly unsuspicious  disposition,  and  this  time  was 
swallowing  piecemeal  what  seemed  to  my  New 
England  mind  a  very  unseasonable  caterpillar. 
And  now  I  made  a  further  discovery :  the  shoul- 
der of  the  bird's  wing  was  edged  with  a  line  of 
pretty  bright  red,  of  a  shade  between  chestnut 
and  carmine !  Surely,  it  was  only  a  matter  of 
surviving  to  reach  the  hotel  and  the  mystery 
would  be  solved.  Calaveras  or  what  not,  it  was 
impossible  that  there  should  be  two  warblers 
marked  in  this  singular  manner. 

Well,  I  got  back  to  my  room,  and  sure  enough, 
not  only  were  there  not  two  warblers  thus  marked, 
there  was  not  even  one.  Calaveras  was  nothing 
to  the  purpose.  My  inspiration  must  have  come 
from  the  wrong  place.  At  any  rate,  it  was  un- 
profitable for  instruction.  It  was  n't  far  to  go, 
you  may  say,  but  I  was  at  my  wits'  end. 

That  evening  I  had  occasion  to  answer  a  letter 
from  an  eminent  ornithologist,  who  has  herself 
worked  much  in  the  Southwest,  and  besides  has 
at  her  elbow  the  best  of  American  bird  collec- 
tions. She  would  be  able  to  help  me  out  of  my 


174  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

difficulty.  In  all  innocence,  therefore,  I  stated 
my  case.  It  was  possible,  I  admitted  (thrice 
lucky  admission  —  it  is  always  politic  to  seem 
modest,  however  one  may  feel),  that  the  bird 
was  not  a  warbler,  after  all,  though,  if  it  were 
not,  I  had  no  idea  what  it  could  be. 

Well,  the  next  day  I  was  out  in  the  country 
again,  this  time  in  a  pecan  grove,  with  tall  seed- 
bearing  weeds  standing  by  the  acre  under  the  tall, 
leafless  trees  (a  paradise  for  sparrows),  when 
I  heard  a  chickadee  whistling  his  four  notes  in 
the  distance.  "  How  closely  his  music  resembles 
that  of  his  relative  as  we  hear  it  in  Florida," 
I  said  to  myself.  And  this  reflection  set  me 
asking,  "  Where  is  that  odd  little  titmouse,  the 
verdin,  that  was  said  to  be  common  about  San 
Antonio  at  all  seasons  ?  "  And  then,  like  a  flash, 
came  the  answer :  "  Why,  man,  that  was  a  ver- 
din you  saw  yesterday,  out  in  the  chaparral,  and 
mistook  for  a  warbler."  And  so  it  turned  out. 
Red  shoulder-strap  and  all,  everything  suited. 
The  verdin,  by  the  by,  is  a  distinctively  South- 
western species,  not  Parus,  but  Auriparus.  My 
bird  had  been  a  female,  I  suppose,  showing  less 
yellow  than  her  mate  would  have  done.  Perhaps 
if  I  had  seen  him  instead  of  her,  I  should  not 
have  been  so  befooled. 

No  sooner  was  the  puzzle  thus  satisfactorily 


A  BIRD-GAZER'S  PUZZLES  175 

solved,  than  I  began  to  meditate,  with  something 
less  of  satisfaction,  upon  the  letter  I  had  written 
the  evening  before.  I  thought,  too,  of  the  many 
more  or  less  foolish  letters  that  I  had  myself  re- 
ceived (and  sometimes  smiled  at,  I  fear)  in  the 
past  twenty  years,  letters  in  which  eager  search- 
ers after  ornithological  knowledge  had  confided 
to  me  marvelous  accounts  of  the  wonders  they 
had  seen  afield,  and  by  an  unhappy  fate  could 
find  no  description  of  when  they  returned  to  the 
study.  Not  many  of  these  correspondents,  as  well 
as  I  could  now  remember,  had  ever  mistaken  a 
titmouse  for  a  warbler !  I  must  dispatch  a  post- 
script to  my  letter  by  the  earliest  mail.  And  so 
I  did,  ostensibly,  of  course,  to  save  my  friend 
the  trouble  of  a  reply,  but  really  to  prove  to  her 
that,  though  I  was  capable  of  blundering,  I  was 
also  capable  of  a  second  thought. 

And  now,  having  made  my  confession,  I  am 
bound  to  add  that  some  who  may  laugh  at  me 
would  possibly  have  been  little  wiser  than  I,  had 
they  stood  in  my  shoes ;  for  the  verdin  does  not 
look  the  least  in  the  world  like  anything  that 
goes  by  the  name  of  titmouse  or  chickadee  up  in 
our  Northern  country.  I  hope  to  see  more  of  it, 
and  especially  to  hear  its  song,  which  is  said  to 
be  of  surprising  volume. 

Really  (and  this  is  why  I  have  told  this  not 


176  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

very  exciting  tale  at  such  length),  it  is  the  chief 
delight  of  bird-gazing  in  a  strange  country  that 
one  has  to  begin,  as  it  were,  all  one's  studies  over 
again ;  as  I  have  seen  a  professor  of  botany  in 
similar  circumstances  fingering  the  leaves  of  the 
manual  like  the  veriest  schoolboy,  as  for  the  time 
being  he  was.  It  is  not  the  proudest  way  of  re- 
newing one's  youth,  but  it  will  answer.  And  con- 
ditions being  as  they  are,  nothing  else  will  answer. 
Such  is  my  present  case  here  in  Texas.  Even 
now,  in  the  dead  of  winter,  with  the  number  of 
species  greatly  reduced,  the  novelties  seen  in  one 
walk  are  so  many  that  the  man  who  uses  no  gun, 
and  so  can  take  no  specimens  home  with  him  for 
inspection,  is  often  put  to  his  trumps  when  he 
comes  to  run  over  his  day's  notes.  Though  he 
may  have  done  his  best,  he  is  certain  to  have 
overlooked  or  forgotten  some  detail  which,  with 
the  book  before  him,  turns  out  to  be  all  impor- 
tant. What  a  pity  he  did  not  note  with  more 
exactness  the  proportion  of  white  on  the  tail 
feathers,  or  the  position  of  a  certain  black  spot 
on  the  side  of  the  head !  He  must  go  out  again, 
and  —  if  he  is  fortunate  enough  to  find  the  bird 
—  secure  a  stricter  and  more  intelligent  obser- 
vation. It  is  plaguing  fun,  but  it  is  fun,  never- 
theless, and  good  practice,  besides ;  and  withal, 
it  leaves  work  for  to-morrow. 


A  BIRD-GAZER'S  PUZZLES  177 

It  must  be  admitted,  moreover,  if  the  truth  is 
to  be  told,  —  and  it  is  sometimes  better  to  tell 
it,  —  that  no  amount  of  observation  in  the  field 
will  be  likely,  in  a  month  or  two,  at  any  rate,  to 
settle  all  the  nice  questions  that  confront  the  stu- 
dent in  a  new  region  in  these  latter  days ;  espe- 
cially if  the  region  happens  to  be,  like  this  about 
San  Antonio,  one  in  which  Eastern  and  Western 
forms  of  the  same  species  are  to  be  found  over- 
lapping each  other.  It  was  very  well  for  Emerson 
to  speak,  poetically,  of  naming  all  the  birds  with- 
out a  gun.  He  lived  before  the  day  of  trinomials  ; 
or  if  that  be  not  quite  true,  before  our  younger 
brood  of  ambitious  closet  ornithologists  had  set 
themselves  so  zealously  at  the  work  of  dividing 
and  subdividing.  Time  was  when  a  song  sparrow 
was  a  song  sparrow,  and  there  was  an  end  of  it. 
Now  to  call  a  bird  by  that  name  is  only  the  be- 
ginning of  sorrows.  What  kind  of  song  sparrow 
is  it  ?  My  Western  handbook  enumerates  about 
fifteen  sub-species,  and  the  differences,  I  suspect, 
are  many  of  them  almost  too  fine  for  opera-glass 
determination.  For  what  I  know,  a  microscope 
might  be  more  to  the  purpose. 

The  man  who  refuses  a  gun  must  accept  the 
limitations  that  go  with  that  refusal.  Time  and 
repeated  observation  will  do  much ;  a  good  ear 
will  help  —  in  some  cases  it  will  do  the  larger 


178  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

half  of  the  work ;  but  he  must  not  expect  to  ac- 
complish with  a  glass  and  patience  exactly  what 
another  man  accomplishes  with  powder  and  shot 
and  a  pair  of  dividers.  In  the  study  of  orni- 
thology, as  elsewhere,  there  are  diversities  of 
operations,  and  possibly  not  the  same  spirit. 

If  I  cannot  be  certain  whether  the  vesper 
sparrows  I  saw  to-day  were  light-colored  enough 
to  pass  for  fooecetes  gramineus  confinis,  or  were 
probably  nothing  but  plain  Pooecetes  gramineus^ 
I  must  put  up  with  my  ignorance,  distressing  as 
it  is.  Possibly,  if  I  were  to  see  species  and  sub- 
species side  by  side,  even  in  the  field,  I  could  tell 
them  apart ;  possibly  I  could  not.  Whether  their 
songs  differ,  is  a  point  concerning  which  my  book, 
after  the  manner  of  books,  has  nothing  to  offer ; 
and  as  the  birds  are  now  dumb,  there  is  nothing 
for  me  to  do  but  to  call  them  vesper  sparrows, 
and  await  developments. 

And  some  things  can  be  settled,  even  in  Texas, 
with  no  weapon  but  a  field-glass.  I  know,  for 
example,  that  I  have  to-day  seen  Mexican  gold- 
finches, and  Arctic  towhees,  and  red-shafted 
flickers.  That  is  more  than  half  a  loaf,  by  a  good 
deal,  and  several  times  better  than  no  bread. 


LUCK  ON  THE  PKAIRIE 

i 

A  WELL-GROOMED  hobby  will  carry  its  rider  com- 
fortably over  many  a  slough. 

I  was  on  my  way  westward  to  El  Paso,  and 
knowing  that  the  train  was  due  there  before  day- 
light, I  left  my  berth  early,  and  had  gone  out  upon 
the  porch  of  the  observation  car  to  catch  a  bite 
of  fresh  air  and  enjoy  the  first  faint  flushes  of 
the  dawn,  when  a  train-hand,  passing  in  the  semi- 
darkness,  informed  me  that  the  wreck  of  a  freight 
train  was  on  the  track  in  front  of  us,  and  that 
we  should  probably  not  be  able  to  move  for  eight 
or  nine  hours.  I  had  noticed  that  we  were  stand- 
ing still  upon  a  "  siding,"  but  such  halts  are  not 
infrequent  on  a  single-track  road,  and  having  my 
mind  upon  pleasanter  themes,  I  had  passed  the 
circumstance  by  without  further  thought. 

The  news  of  our  trouble  spread,  as  one  pas- 
senger after  another  made  his  unhandsome,  half- 
civilized  appearance  from  behind  the  curtains, 
and  though  we  proved  to  be  a  pretty  philosoph- 
ical company,  as  transcontinental  travelers  have 
need  to  be,  the  general  run  of  comment  was  not 
hilarious. 


180  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

A  turn  outside,  as  it  grew  lighter,  showed  that 
we  were  at  a  station  called  San  Elizario  (a  pleas- 
ing name,  surely),  some  three  thousand  two  hun- 
dred feet  above  sea-level.  The  westerly  breeze 
was  a  refreshment,  and  three  or  four  ranges  of 
jagged  mountains  glorified  the  horizon.  If  we 
must  be  delayed,  the  Fates  had  chosen  a  favor- 
able place  for  us. 

I,  for  one,  soon  began  to  feel  reconciled  to 
the  turn  affairs  had  taken,  and  went  back  to  the 
car  for  an  opera-glass.  It  must  be  a  dull  day  in 
Texas  when  a  tender-footed  bird-gazer  cannot 
find  at  least  one  novelty,  and  till  the  "  first  call 
for  breakfast "  I  would  be  out  trying  my  luck. 

An  adobe  building,  windowless  and  unoccu- 
pied, stood  not  far  off,  and  near  it  was  a  cotton- 
wood  tree,  still  holding,  in  spite  of  all  those  Texas 
winds,  part  of  its  last  season's  crop  of  dry  leaves. 
I  walked  in  that  direction,  and  at  the  moment 
three  birds,  with  musical,  goldfinch-like  twitters, 
flew  into  the  tree.  A  glance  showed  them  to  be 
not  goldfinches,  but  small  birds  of  the  purple  finch 
group,  very  bright  and  rosy  (the  two  males), 
and  thickly  streaked  underneath.  "The  house 
finch !  "  I  exclaimed. 

This  is  a  Western  beauty,  greatly  beloved  for 
its  color,  its  music,  and  its  engaging  familiarity, 
by  all  to  whom  it  is  a  neighbor.  I  had  read  of 


LUCK  ON  THE  PRAIRIE  181 

its  charms,  and  had  freshly  in  mind  an  enthusi- 
astic eulogy  of  it  by  an  old  friend,  now  a  resident 
of  Colorado,  whom  I  had  chanced  to  fall  in  with 
a  fortnight  before  in  a  railway  car.  With  those 
three  lovely  creatures  talking  to  me,  I  felt  that 
the  day  was  saved. 

A  Say's  phoebe  was  near  by,  in  a  pear  orchard 
(for  the  piece  of  prairie  land  on  which  we  so  un- 
expectedly found  ourselves  was  under  irrigation), 
and  as  I  had  met  it  first  only  forty-eight  hours 
before  —  at  Del  Rio  —  I  was  glad  to  see  more 
of  its  very  demure  and  pretty  habits,  especially 
of  its  clever  trick  of  hovering  at  considerable 
length  just  over  the  grass.  The  rather  bright 
buff  of  its  under-parts  is  one  of  its  striking  char- 
acteristics, and  now,  when  I  caught  sight  of  it  in 
the  distance,  I  had  for  a  moment  thoughts  of 
some  unfamiliar  kind  of  oriole. 

There  was  barely  time  to  pay  my  respects  to 
the  phoebe  before  a  flash  of  blue  wings  made  me 
aware  of  something  more  interesting  still,  a  bevy 
of  bluebirds.  It  would  be  good  fortune,  surely, 
if  they  should  turn  out  to  be  of  one  of  the  sev- 
eral Western  forms  that  I  had  never  seen.  I 
drew  near,  therefore,  with  all  carefulness,  and 
needed  but  one  look  to  assure  myself  that  such 
was  indeed  the  case.  Their  backs  were  not  blue, 
but  of  a  chestnut  shade.  The  blue  of  the  wings, 


182  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

moreover,  was  not  quite  the  same  as  that  of  our 
common  Eastern  Sialia. 

Whatever  they  were,  the  color  of  the  backs 
would  probably  be  enough  to  name  them,  and  I 
returned  to  the  car  for  breakfast  and,  first  of 
all,  to  make  sure  of  my  new  birds'  identity.  A 
consultation  of  the  handbook  showed  it  to  be 
reasonably  certain  that  they  were  of  the  sub- 
species Sialia  mexicana  bairdi,  the  chestnut- 
backed  bluebird ;  but  I  had  failed  to  observe  one 
important  mark:  the  throat  should  have  been 
"purplish  blue."  I  wished  very  much  to  see 
them  again,  but  they  had  disappeared.  Doubt- 
less they  were  migrants  or  stragglers,  and  by 
this  time  were  far  away.  A  pity  I  had  not  been 
more  painstaking  while  I  had  the  opportunity. 
The  one  safe  rule  is  to  note  everything,  though 
it  is  a  rule  more  easily  laid  down  than  lived  up 
to,  to  be  sure,  especially  in  a  new  place,  with 
many  distractions.  Anyhow,  the  birds  must  be 
of  the  chestnut-backed  sub-species,  I  reassured 
myself,  for  the  sufficient  reason  that  it  was  im- 
possible, here  in  western  Texas,  that  they  should 
be  anything  else. 

Allaying  my  scruples  thus,  I  started  across  a 
field  toward  a  farmhouse,  and  on  the  way  noticed 
a  crow  flying  over.  It  was  the  first  one  I  had 
seen  since  reaching  San  Antonio,  —  the  chapar- 


LUCK  ON  THE  PRAIRIE  183 

ral  country  not  favoring  birds  of  the  crow-jay 
tribe,1  —  and  I  remarked  it  with  pleasure.  And 
then,  remembering  something  I  had  lately  read 
of  Arizona,  I  thought,  "  But  is  it  a  crow,  after 
all  ?  Is  n't  it  one  of  the  white-necked  ravens 
that  are  set  down  as  so  common  and  familiar  in 
this  part  of  the  world  ?"  And,  in  fact,  it  was; 
for  the  next  moment  it  began  calling  in  a  voice 
that  put  the  possibility  of  its  being  a  common 
American  crow,  the  only  one  that  could  possibly 
be  met  with  in  all  this  region,  quite  out  of  the 
account.  Another  new  bird !  The  third  within 
half  an  hour  !  Surely  this  was  better  than  get- 
ting into  El  Paso  on  schedule  time.  Let  El 
Paso  wait.  It  would  probably  last  the  day  out. 
But  the  story  was  not  yet  done,  for  after  a  lit- 
tle the  meadow  larks,  of  which  there  were  many 
in  the  fields  (with  large  flocks  of  horned  larks, 
also),  began  singing.  I  was  disappointed  in  the 
song,  of  the  beauty  of  which  I  had  formed  the 
most  exalted  expectations,  but  consoled  myself 
with  believing  that  the  birds  were  not  Western 
meadow  larks  proper,  but  the  Texan  sub-species ; 
otherwise  I  must  conclude  that  their  voices  were 


1  I  could  hardly  believe  it  anything  but  an  accidental  omis- 
sion when  I  noticed  the  total  absence  of  jays,  crows,  and  ra- 
vens from  Mr.  Att water's  list  of  the  birds  of  San  Antonio  and 
vicinity.  See  The  Auk,  vol.  ix,  p.  229. 


184  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

still  somewhat  winter-bound,  or  at  least,  not  yet 
keyed  up  to  concert  pitch. 

A  sparrow  hawk  beside  the  farmhouse  before 
mentioned  allowed  me  to  stand  almost  under  his 
low  tree  before  he  took  wing,  and  when  at  last 
he  did  so  I  had  a  feeling  that  he  was  rather  sur- 
prisingly long.  I  thought  nothing  more  of  the 
matter  at  the  moment,  but  later,  discovering  by 
a  reference  to  the  handbook  that  a  variety  of 
Falco  sparverius,  somewhat  larger  and  with  a 
longer  tail,  had  been  described  from  this  region, 
I  concluded  it  probable,  not  to  say  certain,  that 
my  impression  had  been  correct,  and  that  the 
bird  was  not  my  old  acquaintance  of  the  East, 
but  Falco  sparverius  deserticola.  That  would 
make  the  new  birds  of  the  morning  four  instead 
of  three. 

All  this  while,  it  must  be  understood,  there 
was  always  the  possibility  that  the  train  might 
start  at  any  moment,  no  positive  information 
upon  that  point  being  obtainable,  so  that  I  could 
move  about  only  within  a  narrowly  limited  area. 
For  a  man  thus  tethered  I  was  doing  pretty 
well,  whatever  my  unornithological  fellow-trav- 
elers might  think  of  my  peculiar  movements  and 
attitudes.  And  to  increase  my  enthusiasm,  as  I 
turned  to  go  back  to  the  train  for  dinner,  in 
crossing  an  irrigation  ditch  (now  dry),  bordered 


LUCK  ON  THE  PRAIRIE  185 

with  a  dense  thicket  of  low  shrubs,  I  caught  the 
tinkle  of  junco  voices  and  presently  a  glimpse  of 
white  tail  feathers.  Now,  then,  since  luck  was 
the  order  of  the  day,  it  was  as  likely  as  not  that 
these  were  not  simple  Junco  hyemalis,  such  as  I 
had  found  at  San  Antonio,  but  one  of  several 
Western  kinds  that  might,  for  aught  I  was 
aware,  be  looked  for  hereabout. 

And  so  it  proved.  The  birds  were  amazingly 
shy  and  secretive,  but  with  patience  I  had  three 
or  four  of  them  under  my  glass  one  after  an- 
other ;  and  they  were  noticeably  different  from 
our  Eastern  junco,  and  belonged,  as  the  book's 
description  made  clear,  to  the  variety  Junco  hye- 
malis  connectens,  the  intermediate  junco,  so 
(not  very  poetically)  called. 

I  went  to  dinner  with  an  excellent  appetite, 
and  afterward,  the  delay  of  the  train  still  con- 
tinuing, though  with  rumors  that  its  end  was 
near,  I  took  one  more  turn  in  the  field,  and  this 
time  happened  upon  still  another  stranger,  the 
handsomest  of  the  day,  so  wonderfully  handsome, 
though  "  handsome  "  is  too  cheap  a  word,  that  a 
man  would  have  to  go  far  to  beat  it  —  an  Ari- 
zona Pyrrhuloxia  ;  a  bird  —  related  to  the  cardi- 
nal grosbeak  group  —  having  no  representative 
in  the  East.  It  would  be  a  shame  to  attempt  a 
description  of  it  here  at  the  end  of  a  hurried 


186  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

sketch,  but  it  made  a  glorious  sixth  in  my  list  of 
the  day's  findings.  I  shall  see  more  of  it,  I  trust, 
when  I  reach  the  territory  to  which  it  more  dis- 
tinctively belongs. 

One  other  piece  of  good  fortune  I  must  not 
fail  to  chronicle,  though  I  have  omitted  to  do  so 
in  its  proper  place.  Late  in  the  forenoon,  after 
I  had  given  the  bluebirds  up  for  lost,  I  discov- 
ered them  sitting,  the  six  together,  a  lovely  com- 
pany, among  the  leaves  of  a  cottonwood  tree,  as 
if  they  had  taken  shelter  from  the  wind ;  and  the 
book's  description  was  borne  out :  their  throats 
were  "  purplish  blue." 

The  nine  hours — for  so  long  the  embargo  lasted 
—  passed  all  too  soon.  If  I  could  have  had  two 
or  three  hours  of  free  wandering,  who  knows 
what  other  bright  names  I  might  have  brought 
back  ?  I  went  so  far,  indeed,  as  to  inquire  of  the 
postmaster  and  variety  storekeeper  —  a  genial, 
smiling  German  —  whether  there  was  any  place 
in  the  neighborhood  where  a  stranger  could  be 
put  up  for  the  night ;  but  he  thought  not,  and 
advised  me,  not  at  all  inhospitably,  to  stick  to  the 
train.  And  possibly,  after  all,  I  had  found  more 
rather  than  less  for  being  compelled  to  beat  a 
small  space  over  again  and  again,  instead  of 
ranging  farther  afield.  At  all  events,  I  had  dis- 
covered a  new  use  for  ornithological  enthusiasm, 


LUCK  ON  THE  PRAIRIE  187 

and  I  might  almost  add  for  railway  accidents.  I 
do  not  expect  to  find  many  birdier  places,  no 
matter  where  my  wanderings  take  me,  than  that 
piece  of  dry,  winter-bleached  prairie  about  San 
Elizario. 


OVER  THE  BORDER 

ON  my  first  morning  at  El  Paso,  where,  by  good 
luck,  as  already  explained,  I  arrived  nine  or  ten 
hours  behind  time,  I  made  an  early  start  for 
Juarez,  the  Mexican  city  on  the  opposite  bank  of 
the  Rio  Grande.  As  I  waited  for  the  car  at  the 
corner  of  the  street,  a  rosy  house  finch  stood  on 
the  top  of  a  telegraph  pole  overhead,  singing 
ecstatically.  The  pretty  creature,  it  is  evident,  is 
very  much  at  home  in  this  bustling  city,  at  least 
in  winter,  for  I  was  hardly  in  my  room  on  the 
afternoon  of  my  arrival  before  I  heard  its  warble, 
and  looking  out  of  the  window  beheld  the  bird 
perched  upon  the  eaves  of  a  building  across  the 
way,  where  more  than  once  since  then  I  have 
heard  and  seen  it.  I  am  sorry  to  add  that  the 
English  sparrow,  its  most  unworthy  rival,  is  here 
also,  though  for  the  moment  in  small  numbers. 

When  the  car  came  along,  it  proved  to  be  an 
open  one. 

"A  rather  cold  morning  for  open  cars,"  I 
said  to  the  youthful  conductor. 

"Oh,  we  run  open  cars  all  winter,"  he  an- 
swered. "  But  I  suppose  we  don't  mind  the  cold 


OVER  THE  BORDER  189 

so  much,"  he  continued,  emphasizing  the  pro- 
noun, "  because  we  are  out  of  doors  all  the  time." 

A  Northern  tenderfoot  might  naturally  be  less 
inured  to  frigidity,  he  seemed  to  imply ;  but  I 
remarked  that  he  wore  the  heaviest  of  overcoats 
with  the  collar  up.  Warm  days  (much  like  New 
England  June),  cool  nights,  clear  skies,  constant 
winds,  dryness  and  dust  —  such  is  the  January 
climate  of  El  Paso,  if  my  four  days  have  given 
me  a  fair  impression  of  its  quality. 

Presently  we  crossed  a  short  bridge. 

"  Was  that  the  river?  "  I  asked  my  seatmate, 
a  minute  afterward,  a  sudden  suspicion  coming 
over  me,  though  it  seemed  so  absurd  that  I  was 
half  ashamed  to  betray  it. 

"  Yes,  sir ;  that  was  the  Rio  Grande.  You  're 
in  Mexico  now,"  he  answered. 

Yes,  and  that  must  have  been  the  Mexican 
Custom  House  officer  whom  I  had  seen  step  out 
of  the  door  of  a  small  building  on  the  southern 
bank  of  the  river  and  salute  our  conductor  so 
politely.  None  of  us  looked  like  smugglers,  I 
suppose.  At  all  events,  the  car  was  not  "  held 
up,"  as  happened  at  the  other  end  of  the  bridge, 
a  day  or  two  later,  while  two  rather  boisterous 
young  fellows  on  the  rear  seat  made  themselves 
merry  over  the  attempt  of  Uncle  Sam's  official 
representative  to  collect  a  duty.  International 


190  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

travel,  even  in  an  electric  street-car,  is  liable  to 
complications. 

As  for  the  river,  it  was  practically  dry.  Pe- 
destrians were  crossing  it  —  to  save  toll  —  on  a 
few  small  stepping-stones  at  a  point  where  the 
current  could  not  have  been  ten  feet  wide  nor 
more  than  half  of  ten  inches  deep.  My  seatmate 
explained  that  so  much  water  was  drawn  off 
above  this  point  for  irrigation  purposes  that  the 
river  had  little  left  for  its  own  use ;  and  in  fact, 
more  than  once  afterward  I  saw  its  bed  abso- 
lutely dry,  so  that  even  the  stepping-stones  had 
for  the  day  gone  out  of  business.  Yet  it  is  a  real 
rio  grande,  for  all  that,  and  the  life  of  a  long, 
long  strip  of  Texas. 

Drought  is  the  mark  of  this  country.  A 
friendly  citizen  (of  whom,  in  my  ignorance,  I 
had  inquired  about  "  suburban  trains  "  !)  warned 
me  earnestly  against  wandering  far  out  of  the 
town.  If  some  Mexican  did  not  kill  me  "for 
the  sake  of  the  clothes  I  had  on  "  (an  ignoble 
death,  surely),  I  might  get  lost  (an  easy  matter, 
by  my  adviser's  tell),  in  which  event,  if  nothing 
more  serious  happened  to  me,  I  should  infallibly 
perish  of  thirst. 

The  car  took  me  through  the  compact  little 
ciudad  (a  five-minute  passage,  perhaps),  and  I 
struck  out  for  the  country,  along  the  line  of  the 


OVER  THE  BORDER  191 

Mexican  Central  Railroad,  in  the  direction  of  the 
mountains,  heading  my  course  for  a  cemetery  out 
on  the  slope,  in  the  midst  of  the  chaparral.  White- 
necked  ravens  were  foraging  beside  the  track,  as 
little  disturbed  by  human  approach  as  so  many 
English  sparrows  might  have  been.  "  How  soon 
the  strange  becomes  familiar ! "  I  thought.  I 
had  never  seen  a  white-necked  raven  (there  is 
no  whiteness  visible,1  the  bird  being  a  very  imp 
of  darkness  to  look  at  it)  till  less  than  twenty- 
four  hours  ago,  and  already  I  was  passing  it  with 
something  like  indifference.  I  was  far  from  in- 
different, however,  two  afternoons  later,  when 
for  the  first  time  I  watched  a  flock  of  several 
hundred  soaring  in  mazy  circles  high  overhead, 
after  the  manner  of  buzzards  or  sea-gulls. 

No  other  birds  showed  themselves  till  I  drew 
near  the  cemetery  gate,  when  suddenly  the  bushes 
just  in  front,  straight  between  me  and  the  sun, 
were  alive  with  sparrows.  My  eyes,  dazzled  as 
they  were  by  the  sunshine,  caught  sight  of  one 
lark  bunting  as  the  flock  took  wing.  I  must  see 
more  of  it,  —  it  was  my  first  one,  —  and  started 
eagerly  in  pursuit.  But  the  creatures  were  timid 

1  True  as  a  general  statement ;  but  once,  at  Tucson,  I  saw 
a  bird  standing  on  the  top  of  a  telegraph  pole  facing  a  pretty 
stiff  breeze,  which  blew  the  feathers  of  the  throat  apart  till 
they  showed  a  snow-white  spot  as  large  as  a  silver  dollar. 


192  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

beyond  all  calculation,  and  though  I  pursued 
them  with  cautious  haste  for  some  distance,  I 
could  never  come  up  with  them.  Wherever  I 
looked,  there  was  nothing  but  white-crowned 
sparrows ;  handsome  birds,  the  sight  of  which  is 
almost  an  event  in  Massachusetts,  but  so  abun- 
dant in  Texas  at  this  time  of  the  year  —  as  Lin- 
coln finches  are,  also  —  that  I  have  begun  to 
turn  away  from  them  as  almost  a  nuisance.  It 
becomes  vexatious  to  a  man  in  search  of  novel- 
ties when  even  an  old  favorite  keeps  itself  too 
persistently  under  his  glass.  As  the  proverb  has 
it,  there  is  reason  in  all  things. 

While  I  was  beating  the  chaparral  over,  still 
in  search  of  those  missing  white  wing-patches,  I 
noticed  a  funeral  procession  coming  from  the 
city.  Heading  the  cortege  was  what  in  a  Massa- 
chusetts town  would  be  called  a  "  depot  carriage." 
It  served  the  purpose  of  a  hearse,  I  suppose,  and 
in  it  sat  two  men  bareheaded.  It  seemed  a  neigh- 
borly and  Christian  act  to  accompany  a  brother 
mortal  to  the  grave  in  this  fraternal  manner. 
The  second  carriage  was  an  open  buggy,  drawn 
by  a  white  horse. 

These  things  I  took  note  of  while  the  proces- 
sion was  still  a  long  way  off  (a  military  band, 
still  farther  away,  at  the  barracks,  no  doubt, 
was  playing  a  march),  and  meantime  I  went  up 


OVER  THE  BORDER  193 

to  the  cemetery  fence  and  looked  over.  The 
monuments  were  mostly,  if  not  wholly,  wooden 
crosses,  with  the  ordinary  run  of  affectionate 
epitaphs.  A  man,  who  appeared  to  be  the  keeper 
of  the  place,  came  out  of  the  one  house  near  at 
hand,  and  asked  me  something  in  Spanish,  to 
which  I  replied  in  English.  We  were  unable  to 
communicate  with  each  other  till  finally  I  said, 
"  No  sabe"  It  was  not  precisely  what  I  intended 
to  tell  him  ;  but  it  was  all  one.  He  saw  for  him- 
self that  I  spoke  no  Spanish,  and  with  that  left 
me  to  myself. 

I  returned  to  El  Paso  on  foot,  and  as  I  reached 
the  northern  end  of  the  bridge,  walking,  as  it 
happened,  on  the  far  side  of  the  road,  with  my 
overcoat  on  my  arm,  as  careless  as  could  be,  I 
was  hailed  by  an  officer  in  uniform.  I  halted, 
and  he  approached.  Then  he  waited.  It  was  my 
place  to  speak  first,  as  it  seemed,  and  I  began : 

"  Do  you  wish  to  inspect  me  ?  " 

"Well,  what  did  you  buy  in  Mexico?"  he 
asked. 

"  A  postal  card,  and  mailed  it." 

"Was  that  all  you  bought? " 

"Yes." 

"  AH  right." 

The  souvenir  postal-card  industry,  though 
comparatively  infantile,  is  not  "protected,"  it 


194  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

appears,  although,  if  I  had  brought  the  five- 
cents'  worth  away  with  me,  I  might,  for  aught  I 
positively  know,  have  been  called  upon  for  duty. 
The  rights  of  American  laboring  men  must  by 
all  means  be  looked  after.  To  think  what  ruin 
might  befall  this  great  republic  if  its  people,  with 
all  the  rest  of  their  freedom,  should  in  some  fit 
of  madness  insist  upon  the  freedom  to  buy  and 
sell! 

That  was  three  days  ago.  Since  then  I  have 
been  to  Juarez  twice,  pushing  a  little  farther 
each  time  into  the  country  southward.  On  both 
visits  I  found  lark  buntings  in  plenty.  They 
move  about  —  and  sit  about  —  in  peculiarly 
dense  flocks.  One  such,  that  I  saw  this  morn- 
ing, might  have  numbered  a  thousand  birds.  If 
disturbed,  they  rise  in  a  cloud,  ancj  on  coming  to 
rest  again  every  one  seems  to  desire  a  perch  at 
the  very  tip  of  a  bush.  As  they  must  all  alight 
in  the  same  one  or  two  bunches  of  scrub,  how- 
ever, though  there  are  hundreds  of  others  exactly 
like  them  all  about,  there  are  by  no  means  top 
seats  enough  to  go  round,  and  there  is  a  deal  of 
preliminary  hovering,  accompanied  by  a  grand 
confusion  of  formless  twittering,  during  which  — 
the  white  patches  of  the  quivering  wings  and  out- 
spread tails  showing  through  —  the  spectacle  is 
most  animated  and  pleasing. 


OVER  THE  BORDER  195 

As  for  the  city  itself,  it  is  squalid,  but  well 
worth  a  visit ;  having  so  strange  and  other-world- 
ish  a  look  that  one  seems  to  have  crossed  at  least 
an  ocean  rather  than  a  trickling  streamlet.  The 
white  church ;  the  little  shops,  with  their  curious 
wares ;  the  game  cocks  in  the  street,  tethered 
each  by  a  yard  of  cord  to  a  peg  driven  into  the 
ground  on  the  edge  of  the  sidewalk,  crowing  de- 
fiance to  each  other,  and  regarded  proudly  by 
their  owners,  who  now  and  then  take  them  up 
in  their  arms,  caressing  them  fondly,  or  shaking 
one  in  the  face  of  another,  to  see  the  feathers  of 
their  necks  bristle  ;  the  bust  of  Bonito  Juarez 
in  the  fenced  plaza,  the  bust  itself  of  a  size  to 
adorn  a  parlor  mantel,  while  the  marble  pedestal 
is  ten  or  fifteen  feet  high  and  at  least  ten  feet 
square  at  the  base ;  the  Spanish  signboards  and 
placards ;  best  of  all,  the  people  themselves,  men, 
women,  and  children  —  the  children,  some  of 
them,  half  naked,  even  on  a  cold,  windy  forenoon, 
while  the  men  saunter  about,  or  lean  against 
an  adobe  wall  in  the  sun,  wrapped  in  thick, 
bright-colored  blankets  (I  shall  think  of  a  Mexi- 
can, as  long  as  I  live,  as  leaning  against  the  side 
of  a  house)  —  all  these  go  to  make  a  memor- 
able picture  for  a  Yankee  on  his  travels. 


FIRST  DAYS   IN  TUCSON 

WHAT  is  more  fickle  than  New  England  weather  ? 
Nothing,  perhaps,  or  nothing  inanimate,  unless 
it  be  the  weather  of  some  Southern  winter  re- 
sort, say  in  Florida  or  Arizona. 

I  reached  Tucson  in  the  evening  of  January 
31,  a  stop  at  El  Paso  having  saved  me  from 
participation  in  a  railroad  accident,  as  a  result 
of  which  many  passengers  (nobody  knows  how 
many)  were  burned  to  death.  The  first  of  Feb- 
ruary was  bright  and  warm ;  so  that  in  a  long 
forenoon  jaunt  over  the  desert  a  very  light  over- 
coat quickly  became  burdensome.  The  next 
morning,  therefore,  it  was  left  at  home. 

My  course  this  time  was  into  the  valley  of  the 
Santa  Cruz,  where  farmers  live  by  irrigation  and 
barley  fields  are  already  green.  I  had  crossed 
the  river,  pausing  on  the  bridge  to  enjoy  the 
sight  of  my  first  black  phoebe,  —  a  handsome, 
highly  presentable  fellow  with  a  jet-black  waist- 
coat,—  when  all  at  once  the  dusty  road  before 
me  was  seen  to  be  fast  becoming  inundated.  Be- 
side the  fence,  wading  in  mud  and  water,  the 
owner  of  the  fields,  having  taken  up  arms  —  a 


FIRST  DAYS  IN  TUCSON  197 

long-handled  spade  —  against  this  sea  of  troubles, 
appeared  to  have  been  working  hard  to  repair 
the  mischief.  At  that  moment,  however,  he  had 
given  over  the  attempt  in  despair  and  was  lifting 
his  boots,  first  one,  then  the  other,  out  of  the 
mire  and  scraping  them,  rather  ineffectually, 
with  the  spade. 

I  ought  to  have  known  better,  but  it  is  easy 
to  see  the  comical  side  of  other  people's  misfor- 
tunes, and  I  remarked  in  a  cheerful  tone : 

"  Well,  well,  you  seem  to  have  water  to  burn." 

Thereupon  other  floodgates  were  opened,  and 
out  poured  a  stream  of  language,  the  greater  part 
of  it  too  "  colloquial "  for  print.  The  substance 
of  it  all  was  that  a  Mexican  (the  opprobrious 
word  being  dwelt  upon  and  forcibly  qualified) 
had  come  in  the  night  and  let  on  the  water, 
without  giving  him,  the  farmer,  any  notice  of  the 
unseasonable  action.  Now  the  water  was  all.  over 
the  road,  and  all  over  the  yard,  and  close  up  to 
the  back  door  of  the  house.  He  had  sent  for  a 
man  to  help  him. 

Seeing  nothing  better  to  do,  I  picked  my  steps 
among  the  dust-bounded  streams  as  best  I  was 
able,  and  passed  by  on  the  other  side.  I  had  al- 
ways understood  irrigation  to  be  a  kind  of  pre- 
dictable and  controllable  rain,  but  it  appeared 
that,  if  this  were  the  rule,  the  rule  had  exceptions. 


198  TEXAS   AND  ARIZONA 

The  sight  set  me  thinking  that  possibly  if  the  gen- 
eral management  of  the  weather  were  put  into 
human  hands,  as  the  least  presumptuous  of  us 
are  more  or  less  in  the  habit  of  wishing  were  pos- 
sible, it  might  still  be  found  difficult  to  escape 
an  occasional  fault  of  administration.  As  for  my 
farmer's  emphatic  language,  I  held  it  excusable. 
He  certainly  had  provocation,  and  as  the  Scrip- 
ture says,  with  commendable  toleration,  there  is 
a  time  for  everything  under  the  sun. 

The  river  valley  is  narrow,  like  the  river  itself, 
and  on  the  farther  side  is  bounded  sharply  by 
steep  foothills,  behind  which  are  high  mountains. 
I  was  barely  beginning  to  climb  the  nearest  hill, 
over  its  loose  covering  of  small  stones,  when  some 
bird  broke  into  voice  a  little  above  me  ;  one  of 
those  peculiar  voices,  I  said  to  myself,  that  at  a 
first  hearing  afford  almost  no  indication  as  to  the 
size  of  their  owners. 

My  uncertainty  lasted  for  some  minutes,  while 
I  made  my  way  cautiously  upwards,  a  step  or  two 
at  a  time.  The  bird  proved  to  be  a  small  wren, 
—  the  rock  wren,  so  called,  —  said  to  be  "  more 
or  less  abundant "  in  this  region  ;  "  more  "  rather 
than  "  less,"  I  hope,  for  I  fell  in  love  with  the 
creature  immediately. 

One  of  the  birds,  —  for  there  were  two,  talk- 
ing "  back  and  forth,"  as  we  say,  —  his  fit  of 


FIRST  DAYS  IN  TUCSON  199 

nervousness  over,  dropped  into  a  lyrical  mood, 
and  regaled  me  with  a  very  pleasing  bit  of  simple 
music,  all  in  brief  phrases,  but  with  a  surprisingly 
wide  range  of  pitch.  Some  of  the  measures  had 
a  peculiar  vibrant  quality  suggestive  of  the  finest 
work  of  our  common  Eastern  snowbird.  But 
withal,  I  received  the  impression  that  the  musi- 
cian was  rather  trying  his  instrument  than  aim- 
ing at  a  serious  performance. 

While  I  stood  listening,  a  bunch  of  a  dozen 
Mexican  house  finches,  more  than  half  the  num- 
ber in  rosy  plumage,  happened  along  with  the 
usual  chorus  of  twitters,  and  alighted  in  a  very 
peculiar  and  graceful  shrub  (ocotillo,  I  am  told 
is  its  Mexican  name),  which  grows  in  clusters 
of  a  dozen  or  so  of  slender,  angular  stems,  lean- 
ing away  from  one  another  in  all  directions  and 
covered  sparsely  with  reddish  leaves,  which  look 
for  all  the  world  like  the  autumnal  foliage  of 
the  common  barberry.  The  rosy  finches,  perched 
upon  this  group  of  slanting,  wandlike,  fountain- 
like  stems,1  were  exceedingly  pretty  to  look  at. 

All  about  me  stood  tall,  fluted  columns  of  the 
giant  cactus,  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  in  height,  and 

1  Botanically,  if  I  am  correctly  informed,  the  plant  is  Fou- 
quiera  splendens,  otherwise  known  as  candle  wood,  Jacob's  staff, 
and  coach- whip.  Like  the  giant  cactus  it  seems  to  be  restricted 
to  the  foothills. 


200  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

large  enough  for  telegraph  poles.  On  the  day 
before,  my  first  day  in  the  city,  I  had  turned  a 
field-glass  in  this  direction,  and  to  my  surprise 
had  seen  the  hills  covered  with  verdure.  "  Why," 
said  I,  noticing  what  I  took  for  the  trunks  of 
trees  amid  the  green,  "  those  hills  are  forested." 
Now  I  discovered  that  the  greenness  was  mostly 
that  of  the  desert-loving  creosote  bush  (a  low 
shrub,  noticeable  for  being  thornless,  which 
covers  thousands  on  thousands  of  acres  here- 
abouts, and  just  now  is  putting  forth  small  yellow 
blossoms),  while  the  boles  of  trees  were  nothing 
but  giant  cacti. 

Among  the  stones  at  my  feet  grew  flowers  of 
various  unknown  sorts,  especially  a  large  yellow 
one,  apparently  an  evening  primrose,  rising  no 
more  than  two  inches  from  the  ground,  with  a 
tuft  of  leaves  at  the  base  of  the  stem,  or  rather 
at  the  bottom  of  the  calyx.  The  only  flower  of 
them  all  that  I  could  certainly  name  was  a  pretty 
blue  lupine,  smaller  than  our  New  England 
species,  both  in  blossom  and  leaf,  but  so  exactly 
like  it  in  other  respects  that  for  old  acquaint- 
ance' sake,  though  the  lupine  was  never  one  of 
my  particular  favorites,  I  plucked  it  for  my  but- 
tonhole. I  believe  it  is  the  only  natural-looking, 
familiar-looking  wild  plant  that  I  have  so  far 
seen  in  this  desert  country. 


FIRST  DAYS  IN  TUCSON  201 

The  wrens  having  become  silent,  and  the 
finches  flown  away,  I  descended  the  hill  and  took 
the  road  running  along  its  base  northward.  It 
must  lead,  I  thought,  to  another  road  across  the 
valley,  and  would  make  a  round  of  my  forenoon's 
walk.  And  so  it  did ;  but  first  it  brought  me  to 
a  large  building  which  proved  to  be  St.  Mary's 
Sanatorium,  more  commonly  known  as  the  Sis- 
ters' Hospital.  I  had  just  passed  this  and  turned 
the  corner,  facing  the  town,  when  all  in  a  moment, 
so  far  at  least  as  my  perception  of  events  was 
concerned,  the  sky  was  covered  with  black  clouds, 
and  an  icy  north  wind  changed  the  day  from  sum- 
mer to  winter  as  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye. 

No  more  loitering  by  the  way.    I  did  at  once 
what  every  other  creature  was  already  doing  — 
I  hurried.    "  Now  if  I  only  had  that  overcoat !  " 
I  thought ;  but  speed  also  is  an  extra  garment, 
and  I  put  it  on. 

No  more  loitering,  I  said ;  but  I  did  stop  once. 
Halfway  across  the  valley  a  flock  of  blackbirds 
were  feeding  beside  a  barn,  and  I  turned  into 
the  yard  to  look  at  them. 

"  I  want  to  see  what  kind  of  blackbirds  these 
are,"  I  explained  to  the  man  of  the  house,  who 
came  out  of  the  door  at  that  moment. 

"  Oh,  they  're  the  same  kind  that  is  all  over 
the  universe,"  he  answered,  smiling. 


202  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

But  his  generalization  was  hasty,  as  generali- 
zations are  apt  to  be.  They  were  Brewer's  black- 
birds —  the  handsomest  of  grackles ;  birds  that  I 
had  seen  for  the  first  time,  at  Del  Rio,  only  the 
week  before.  I  did  not  stay  to  admire  their  iri- 
descence, but  declining  an  invitation  to  ride  (it 
was  too  cold  for  that,  though  the  man  was  just 
going  to  harness  up,  he  said),  I  buttoned  another 
button  and  hastened  on.  The  two  or  three  per- 
sons I  met  each  had  something  to  say  about  the 
weather,  but  nobody  stopped  for  prolonged  com- 
ment. Short  speeches  and  quick  steps,  or  another 
crack  at  the  mule,  were  the  order  of  the  day. 
Even  at  the  South  a  man  will  generally  hurry  a 
little  rather  than  freeze  to  death. 

Well,  the  experience  was  more  amusing  than 
uncomfortable,  after  all,  and  I  reached  the  hotel 
door  just  as  ram  began  falling.  Before  night 
snow  was  mingled  with  the  rain,  and  the  next 
morning  I  saw  a  small  boy,  his  eyes  dancing  with 
brightness,  making  a  tiny  snow  image  to  stand 
upon  the  front-yard  fence,  while  the  mountains 
—  that  fairly  surround  the  city,  as  they  do  the 
Holy  City  in  the  Hebrew  psalm  —  were  dazzling 
white.  The  mud  was  beyond  belief,  the  walking 
laborious;  but  as  I  paused  now  and  then  for 
breath  or  to  recover  my  footing,  and  saw  all  that 
glory  about  me,  I  thanked  my  stars  that  I  was 


FIRST  DAYS  IN  TUCSON  203 

here.  I  was  glad  to  see  that  even  in  this  arid 
zone  (arida  zona,  as  the  Mexicans  are  supposed 
to  have  begun  by  calling  it)  it  still  knew  how 
both  to  rain  and  to  snow. 

"  Well,  now,  this  was  a  surprise,  was  n't  it  ?  " 
I  remarked  to  a  German  whom  I  met  in  the 
valley  road. 

"  You  bet,"  he  answered ;  and  then,  with  a 
smile,  he  added :  "  but  it  won't  last  only  a  couple 
of  days  ;  that 's  all." 

His  mastery  of  American  idiom  recalls  what 
another  German  farmer  said  on  the  same  fore- 
noon. He  had  been  living  here  and  in  California 
since  '82,  he  told  me. 

"  Which  place  do  you  like  best  ?  "   I  inquired. 

"  Oh,  Arizona,"  he  answered,  without  hesita- 
tion. "Things  are  freer  here,"  he  went  on. 
"  In  Los  Angeles,  now,  you  have  to  dress  up 
once  in  a  while  ;  but  here,  if  you  dress  up,  .or  if 
you  don't  dress  up,  it  don't  cut  no  ice." 

My  first  man's  confident  "  couple  of  days  " 
was  a  trifle  too  confident.  Twice  two  days  have 
passed.  In  that  time  we  have  had  summer 
weather  (at  noon),  a  pretty  hard  freeze  (at 
night),  and  another  rain  and  another  snowfall, 
both  heavier  than  the  first. 

The  winter  visitors,  of  whom  there  are  many, 
the  greater  part,  alas,  ordered  here  for  "lung 


204  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

trouble,"  have  naturally  been  put  out,  —  the 
more  recent  arrivals  among  them  greatly  aston- 
ished ;  they  thought  they  were  coming  to  a  dry 
climate ;  but  the  residents  proper,  if  not  jubilant, 
have  seemed  at  least  reasonably  well  contented 
with  the  turn  of  affairs.  There  has  been  a  gen- 
eral agreement,  to  be  sure  (one  heard  it  on  all 
hands),  that  it  was  "  pretty  muddy  ;  "  the  way- 
faring man,  though  a  fool,  could  not  dispute  the 
statement ;  but  so  far  as  the  prosperity  of  Ari- 
zona is  concerned,  there  is  no  probability  of  an 
excessive  rainfall.  The  more  the  better.  So 
much  is  evident,  even  to  an  itinerant  ornitholo- 
gist, who  may  stand,  if  you  will,  for  the  way- 
faring man  before  mentioned.  What  is  not  so 
clear  to  his  darkened  understanding  is  why  the 
weather,  no  matter  where  one  goes,  should  be 
every  season  so  strangely  exceptional,  so  utterly 
different  from  everything  that  the  oldest  inhabit- 
ant can  remember. 


MOBBED  IN  ARIZONA 

I  HAVE  never  known  a  city  more  orderly  seem- 
ing, more  evidently  peaceful  and  law-abiding 
than  Tucson.  Nowhere  have  I  felt  safer  in  wan- 
dering about  by  myself  in  all  sorts  of  places, 
whether  within  the  city  proper  or  in  the  sur- 
rounding country.  Here  is  a  town,  I  have  said 
to  myself,  where  the  citizen  has  small  need  of 
the  policeman.  And  yet  I  know  a  man,  most 
discreet  and  inoffensive  (not  to  be  shame-faced 
about  it,  let  me  admit  that  I  speak  of  the  bird- 
gazer  himself),  who  a  few  days  ago,  for  no  as- 
signable reason,  was  violently  set  upon,  or,  to 
speak  plainly,  mobbed,  just  outside  the  city 
limits. 

Tucson,  it  should  be  premised,  is  a  thriving, 
rapidly  growing,  modern  city  —  though  it  has 
an  antiquity  to  boast  of,  as  well  —  in  the  midst 
of  a  desert.  Its  own  site  was  originally  part  of 
the  desert.  The  nearest  large  city  is  Los  An- 
geles, California,  five  hundred  miles  distant ;  the 
nearest  village,  from  what  I  hear,  must  be  fifty 
or  sixty  miles  away.  Many  roads  run  out  of  the 
town,  but  only  to  ranches  scattered  here  and 


206  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

there  along  the  two  watercourses,  or  to  mining 
camps  farther  off  in  the  mountains.  How  a  city 
ever  came  to  grow  up  in  a  place  so  isolated,  so 
seemingly  destitute  of  anything  like  local  advan- 
tages, is  a  riddle  beyond  my  reading  ;  but  here 
it  is,  a  city  in  the  desert.  North,  south,  east,  or 
west,  you  may  start  where  you  will  and  go  in 
what  direction  you  please,  and  in  fifteen  minutes 
you  will  be  out  among  the  creosote  bushes  and 
the  cacti,  with  nothing  but  a  world  of  creosote 
and  cactus  —  with  perhaps  a  windmill  and  a 
roof  rising  above  them  somewhere  in  the  distance 
—  between  you  and  the  mountain  range  that 
bounds  the  horizon. 

Well,  this  was  exactly  what  I  myself  did  one 
fine  morning  a  week  ago.  I  walked  up  the  main 
street  of  the  city,  turned  to  the  right,  passed  the 
territorial  university  buildings,  and,  taking  a 
course  northward  toward  the  Santa  Catalinas, 
sauntered  carelessly  forward,  field-glass  in  hand, 
to  see  what  might  be  stirring  in  the  chaparral. 

There  would  not  be  much,  I  knew.  By  day- 
light, at  least,  and  in  the  winter  season,  the 
desert  is  not  a  stirring  place.  In  the  tracts 
where  the  creosote  occupies  the  ground  alone 
there  proved,  as  usual,  to  be  nothing ;  but  pre- 
sently I  came  to  a  place  where  two  or  three  kinds 
of  cactus  were  sprinkled  among  the  creosote 


MOBBED  IN  ARIZONA  207 

bushes,  and  newly  sprung  bluish-green  grass  (I 
call  it  grass,  provisionally,  although,  like  almost 
everything  else  hereabout,  it  has  an  unaccus- 
tomed look)  carpeted  or  half-carpeted  the 
ground.  Here  were  the  almost  inevitable  two 
cactus  wrens  (how  overjoyed  I  was  at  the  unex- 
pected sight  of  my  first  one,  at  San  Antonio, 
only  three  weeks  ago,  and  how  soon  they  have 
become  an  old  story!)  perched,  one  here,  one 
there,  at  the  top  of  branching  cactus  trees  five 
or  six  feet  high,  calling  antiphonally,  as  their 
habit  is,  in  a  coarse,  unmusical,  wearisome  voice 
—  the  same  churlish  phrase  over  and  over  and 
over.  Nothing  but  the  lonesomeness  of  the  de- 
sert, surely,  could  ever  make  that  grating,  repe- 
titive monotony  a  pleasure-giving  sound.  What 
the  birds  will  do  in  the  way  of  song  when  their 
musical  season  arrives,  if  it  ever  does,1  is  more 
than  I  know;  but,  belonging  to  so  musical  a 
family,  they  ought  to  be  capable  of  something 
better  than  this,  for  music,  of  all  gifts,  is  a  thing 
that  runs  in  the  blood.  It  would  be  a  strange 
wren  that  could  not  express  his  happiness  in 
some  really  lyrical  manner. 

In  the  same  neighborhood,  as  has  happened  on 
several  occasions,  were  a  group  of  five  or  six  sage 
thrashers.  It  was  in  this  very  place,  indeed,  that 

1  Alas,  it  never  does. 


208  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

I  first  formed  their  acquaintance  ;  and  a  sorely 
puzzled  novelty-seeker  I  was  on  that  eventful 
afternoon.  The  whole  desert  had  seemed  to  be 
devoid  of  animal  existence,  I  remember,  when  of 
a  sudden  there  stood  those  strange  birds  on  the 
ground  before  me.  At  the  first  instant  they  gave 
me  an  impression  of  overgrown  titlarks.  Then, 
when  I  watched  them  running  at  full  speed  over 
the  grass,  all  at  once  pulling  themselves  up  and 
standing  erect  with  a  snap  of  the  tail,  I  said : 
"  Why,  they  must  be  thrushes  of  some  sort."  In 
attitude  and  action  they  were  almost  exactly  like 
so  many  robins.  The  only  striking  characteristic 
of  their  plumage  was  the  peculiarly  dense  streak- 
ing of  the  under  parts. 

The  mystery  was  heightened  for  me  by  the 
fact  that  they  maintained  an  absolute  silence. 
Indeed,  although  I  have  seen  them  many  times 
since  then,  I  have  yet  to  hear  them  utter  the  first 
syllable.  For  aught  I  can  positively  affirm,  they 
may  every  one  be  mutes.  I  chased  them  about 
for  half  an  hour,  scrutinizing  the  least  detail  of 
their  dress,  all  the  while  wondering  what  on  earth 
to  call  them,  till  finally  it  came  over  me,  I  could 
never  tell  how,  that  they  must  be  sage  thrashers. 

"Yes,"  I  said,  "  Oroscoptes!  I  remember 
that  that  bird  is  described  as  having  a  short 
bill." 


MOBBED  IN  ARIZONA  209 

It  was  a  true  guess  ;  and  in  a  strange  country 
a  man  makes  so  many  poor  guesses  that  he  may 
reasonably  boast  a  little  over  every  good  one. 
To  this  day,  I  am  bound  to  add,  the  birds,  with 
their  short  bills,  their  extraordinary  quickness 
upon  their  feet,  and  their  upright  carriage,  have 
to  my  eye  very  little  the  appearance  of  thrashers. 
Perhaps  when  I  hear  them  sing,  my  feeling  may 
alter. 

There  is  at  least  one  real  thrasher  in  the  de- 
sert, however,  and  usually  in  the  same  places  that 
Oroscoptes  affects,  places  such  as  I  have  men- 
tioned, where  cacti  are  mingled  with  the  omni- 
present creosote.  This  is  Palmer's  thrasher, 
so  called,  a  grayish-brown  bird,  with  the  charac- 
teristic thrasher  make-up — long  bill,  long  body, 
and  long  tail.  He  is  one  of  the  common  birds 
about  Tucson,  both  in  the  river  valley  and  on  the 
desert,  and  one  of  the  few  that  are  already  in 
song.  Even  he,  I  suspect,  is  not  really  letting 
himself  go  as  yet,  but  he  is  in  tune  daily ;  not 
so  versatile  a  performer,  seemingly,  as  our  East- 
ern reddish-brown  bird ;  with  much  less  range 
of  voice,  and  more  given  to  repeating  the  same 
phrase  half  a  dozen  times  in  succession,  so  that 
his  music  has  less  the  air  of  a  strict  improvisa- 
tion ;  but  a  genuine  thrasher,  nevertheless,  with 
a  thrasher's  song.  As  the  season  progresses  he 


210  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

will  probably  grow  more  ecstatic,  though  to  hear 
him  now,  one  would  not  expect  him  ever  to  be- 
come so  mad  a  rhapsodist  as  the  crazy  bird  that 
we  admire,  and  sometimes  smile  at,  in  the  East- 
ern country. 

Whether  the  thrasher  was  seen  on  the  day  I 
am  supposed  to  be  describing,  I  do  not  now  re- 
member, but  in  all  probability  he  was,  for  I  never 
walk  far  in  the  desert  without  seeing  or  hearing 
him.  If  he  does  not  sing,  he  salutes  me  with 
volleys  of  sharp,  whip-snapping  whistles  in  the 
style  of  the  wood  thrush  and  the  robin.  Like 
the  wren,  he  prefers  a  perch  at  the  top  of  a  cactus. 
He  prefers  it,  I  say;  but  in  truth  it  is  almost 
Hobson's  choice  with  him,  since  the  topmost 
spray  of  a  creosote  bush,  the  only  other  thing 
he  could  perch  on,  would  hardly  support  his 
weight.  There  he  stands,  at  all  events,  perfectly 
at  his  ease  among  the  closely  set  spines,  sharp 
as  the  sharpest  needles,  though  how  he  manages 
the  ticklish  feat  so  adroitly  is  more  than  I  can 
imagine. 

I  may  have  seen  two  or  three  desert  sparrows, 
also ;  the  black-throated  sparrow,  that  is,  with 
some  slight  variations,  imperceptible  in  the  bush, 
that  make  him,  in  the  language  of  science,  Am- 
phispiza  bilineata  deserticola;  and  possibly, 
though  this  is  somewhat  less  to  be  taken  for 


MOBBED  IN  ARIZONA  211 

granted,  his  long-tailed  relative,  the  sage  sparrow 
(Amphispiza  belli  nevadensis),  may  have  teased 
me  by  his  shyness.  Both  these  birds  are  said  to 
be  famous  enliveners  of  the  desert,  —  though 
neither  of  them  in  their  present  silent  state  quite 
lives  up  to  his  reputation,  —  and  will  doubtless 
become  prime  favorites  with  me  if  I  remain  here 
long  enough  really  to  know  them.  Where  should 
simple,  hearty  melodies  find  appreciation,  if  not 
in  the  desert  ? 

I  am  slow  in  coming  to  the  point  of  my  story ; 
and  with  reason.  It  is  not  pleasant  to  be  mobbed ; 
there  is  nothing  to  boast  of  in  such  an  adven- 
ture ;  nothing  to  flatter  one's  sense  of  personal 
importance  ;  one  is  not  apt  to  speak  of  it  con 
amore,  as  we  say.  Some  things  are  best  slipped 
over  in  silence.  So  I  have  noticed  that  men  who 
have  served  their  country  in  prison  will  always 
contrive  by  one  path  or  another  to  go  round 
the  name  of  that  unpopular  institution.  But  I 
have  begun,  and  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  to 
finish. 

"Well,  then,  I  had  walked  perhaps  a  mile  and 
a  half  beyond  the  university  buildings,  which  is 
the  same  as  to  say  beyond  the  limits  of  the  town, 
and  found  myself  approaching  a  lonely  ranch, 
when  a  flock  of  ravens,  white-necked  ravens, 
which  abound  hereabout  —  "the  multitudinous 


212  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

raven,"  I  have  caught  myself  saying l  —  rose 
from  the  scrub  not  far  in  advance,  with  the  invari- 
able hoarse  chorus  of  quark,  quark.  I  thought 
nothing  of  it,  the  sight  being  so  much  an  every- 
day matter,  till  after  a  little  I  began  to  be  aware 
that  the  whole  flock  seemed  to  be  concentrating 
its  attention  upon  my  unsuspecting,  inoffensive 
self.  There  must  have  been  fifty  of  the  big  black 
birds.  Round  and  round  they  went  in  circles, 
just  above  my  head,  moving  forward  as  I  moved, 
vociferating  every  one  as  he  came  near,  "  quark, 
quark." 

At  first  I  was  amused ;  it  was  something  new 
and  interesting.  I  recalled  the  time  when  I 
walked  miles  on  miles  over  the  North  Carolina 
mountains  in  hope  of  seeing  one  raven,  and  here 
were  half  a  hundred  almost  within  hand's  reach ; 
I  chaffed  them  as  they  passed,  calling  them  names 
and  quarking  back  to  them  in  derision.  But  be- 
fore very  long  the  novelty  of  the  thing  wore  off ; 
the  persecution  grew  tiresome.  Enough  is  as 
good  as  a  feast ;  and  I  had  had  enough.  "  Quark, 
quark,"  they  yelled,  all  the  while  settling  nearer, 
—  or  so  I  fancied,  —  till  it  seemed  as  if  they 

1  There  is  another  raven  in  Arizona,  rarer  and  larger,  —  a 
real  raven,  so  to  speak,  —  but  I  saw  it  only  a  few  times,  al- 
ways high  in  air,  as  if  it  were  passing  from  one  mountain 
range  to  another. 


MOBBED  IN  ARIZONA  213 

actually  meant  violence.  They  were  doing  pre- 
cisely what  a  flock  of  crows  does  to  an  owl  or 
a  hawk:  they  were  mobbing  me.  "Quark, 
quark !  Hit  him,  there !  Hit  him !  Pick  his  eyes 
out!" 

The  commotion  lasted  for  at  least  half  a  mile. 
Then  the  birds  wearied  of  it,  and  went  off  about 
their  business.  All  but  one  of  them,  I  mean  to 
say.  He  had  no  such  notion.  For  ten  minutes 
longer  he  stayed  by.  His  persistency  was  devil- 
ish. It  became  almost  unbearable.  The  single 
voice  was  more  exasperating  even  than  the  chorus. 
If  the  famous  albatross  carried  on  after  any  such 
outrageous  fashion,  I  have  no  stones  to  throw  at 
the  Ancient  Mariner.  He  acted  well  within  his 
rights.  If  I  had  had  a  crossbow,  and  had  been 
as  good  a  marksman  as  he  was,  —  with  "  his 
glittering  eye,"  —  there  would  have  been  one  less 
raven  in  Arizona,  and  no  questions  asked.  If  a 
dead  calm  had  succeeded,  so  much  the  better. 
"  Quark,  quark ! "  the  black  villain  cried,  wag- 
ging his  impish  head,  and  swooping  low  to  spit 
the  insult  into  my  ear. 

But  all  things  have  an  end,  as  leaves  have 
their  time  to  fall,  and  even  a  raven's  persever- 
ance will  wear  out  at  last.  Perhaps  the  bird 
grew  hungry.  At  all  events  he  gave  over  the 
assault,  stillness  fell  upon  the  desert,  and  an 


214  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

innocent    foot-passenger   went   on    his   way   in 
peace. 

And  this  is  how  I  was  mobbed  in  Arizona.    I 
could  never  have  believed  it. 


AN  IDLE  AFTERNOON 

I  HAVE  heard  of  a  man  who  invariably  begins 
his  letters,  whether  of  friendship  or  business, 
with  a  bulletin  of  the  day's  weather  :  it  rains,  or 
it  shines  ;  it  is  cold  or  warm  ;  and  to  my  way  of 
thinking  it  is  far  from  certain  that  the  custom  is 
not  commendable.  It  is  fair  to  sender  and  re- 
ceiver alike  that  the  mental  conditions  under 
which  an  epistle  is  written  should  be  understood ; 
and  there  is  no  man  —  or  no  ordinary  man,  such 
as  most  of  us  have  the  happiness  to  deal  with  — 
whose  thoughts  and  language  are  not  more  or 
less  colored  by  those  skyey  influences  the  sum 
of  which  we  designate  by  the  interrogative  name 
of  weather.  I  say  "interrogative,"  because  I 
assume,  although,  having  no  dictionary  by  me, 
I  cannot  verify  the  assumption,  that  the  word 
"  weather  "  is  only  a  corruption  or  variant  of  the 
older  word  "  whether ;  "  the  thing  itself  being 
an  entity  so  variable  and  doubtful  that  remarks 
about  it  fall  naturally,  and  almost  of  necessity, 
into  a  discussion  of  probabilities,  in  other  words, 
of  "  whether." 

As  to  the  weather  here  in  Tucson,  I  could  fill 


216  TEXAS  AND   ARIZONA 

all  my  letters  with  it,  and  still  leave  a  world  of 
things  unsaid.  Its  fluctuations  are  so  constant 
that  they  tend  to  become  monotonous ;  as  Thoreau 
said  of  one  of  his  Concord  days,  that  it  was  so 
wet  you  might  almost  call  it  dry. 

Three  or  four  mornings  ago,  for  example,  I 
started  early  for  a  seven-mile  tramp  across  the 
desert.  I  wore  overcoat  and  woolen  gloves,  and 
needed  them.  It  was  so  cool,  indeed,  that  I  left 
word  for  an  extra  garment  to  be  put  into  the 
carriage  that  was  to  come  out  and  fetch  me  back 
at  noon. 

That  same  afternoon  I  walked  down  into  the 
valley  of  the  Santa  Cruz.  The  sun  was  blazing, 
and  the  heat  intense.  The  few  cottonwood  trees 
scattered  along  the  road  were  still  leafless  (I  had 
left  my  umbrella  at  home — for  the  last  time)  and 
the  only  shelter  to  be  found  was  on  the  north- 
easterly side  of  the  telegraph  poles.  I  believe 
I  never  before  complained  of  such  obstructions 
that  they  were  not  big  enough ;  but  every- 
thing comes  round  in  its  turn.  My  thoughts  ran 
back  to  the  time  when  a  boy  of  my  acquaintance 
used  to  trudge  homeward  from  berry-picking  ex- 
cursions on  burning  July  noons.  Also  I  thought 
of  that  comfortable  Hebrew  text  about  the 
"  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land."  The 
man  who  wrote  that  might  have  lived  in  Arizona. 


AN  IDLE  AFTERNOON  217 

Finally,  out  of  sheer  desperation,  I  stepped  into 
the  yard  of  a  little  adobe  house,  and  being  obliged 
to  walk  almost  to  the  door,  said  to  the  motherly- 
looking  woman  who  came  forward  to  see  what 
was  wanted,  "  Excuse  me,  please,  but  I  only  wish 
to  stand  a  few  minutes  in  the  shade  of  your 
house."  She  looked  surprised,  as  well  she  might. 
No  doubt  she  took  me  for  an  invalid,  as  Arizona 
people  say,  a  "lunger."  Probably,  sitting  in- 
doors, and  used  to  summer  temperature  in  these 
parts,  she  had  been  thinking  of  the  day  as  rather 
cool,  not  to  say  wintry.  Would  n't  I  come  in  and 
sit  awhile  ?  She  was  sure  I  should  be  welcome. 
But  I  answered  no  ;  I  only  desired  to  stand  a  few 
minutes  in  the  shade.  And  two  or  three  hours 
afterward,  within  five  minutes  after  the  sun  went 
down,  —  though  it  had  been  shining  in  at  my 
west  window,  —  I  needed  a  fire. 

Forty-eight  hours  later  we  had  a  snowfall,  — 
the  third  within  ten  days,  —  the  whole  world 
white,  with  "  storm  rubbers  "  barely  equal  to  the 
emergency ;  and  the  next  morning,  the  snow  hav- 
ing gone,  ice  was  thick  in  a  big  tub  of  water 
outside  my  door. 

"  Cold  ?  "  said  an  Illinois  gentleman,  with 
whom  I  fell  into  conversation  yesterday,  "  I  Ve 
been  here  three  weeks,  and  in  that  time  I  Ve  suf- 
fered more  from  cold  than  in  all  my  forty  years." 


218  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

I  suspect  that  he  exaggerated.  For  my  own 
part,  I  have  n't  suffered  from  cold.  It  is  the  oc- 
casional heat  that  makes  me  fearful  of  homesick- 
ness. Three  days  like  that  one  afternoon  would 
set  me  packing.  All  of  which  may  seem  not  very 
important  to  a  chance  reader  ;  but  unless  he  is  of 
a  hopelessly  unimaginative  turn  he  can  perhaps 
conceive  how  interesting  and  important  it  must 
be  to  the  parties  directly  concerned,  especially  if 
he  remembers  that  this  is  a  winter  resort,  where 
weather  is  the  one  thing  needful. 

But  what  a  perfect  afternoon  we  had  yester- 
day!—  cool,  yet  not  too  cool;  and  warm,  yet 
not  too  warm ;  with  a  softness  and  yet  a  gently 
bracing,  uplifting,  pulse-quickening,  life-reviving 
quality  in  the  air  ;  and  the  sky,  too,  clear,  but 
not  too  clear,  so  that  wisps  of  cloud  floated  here 
and  there  over  the  bare,  steep  sides  of  the  Santa 
Catalinas,  giving  them  beauty.  I  was  out  upon 
the  desert  in  a  mood  of  absolute  indolence,  con- 
tented to  walk  a  mile  an  hour,  and  breathe  and 
breathe,  and  look.  At  such  times  it  seems  hardly 
too  much  to  say,  strange  as  the  words  may  sound, 
that  I  am  falling  in  love  with  the  desert,  a  desert 
bounded  only  by  mountains.  Already  I  can  be- 
lieve that  men  are  fascinated  by  it  (the  right 
men),  and  having  once  been  here  cannot  long 
stay  away. 


AN  IDLE  AFTERNOON  219 

Looking  and  dreaming,  the  bird-gazer  within 
me  pretty  well  laid  asleep,  suddenly  I  heard  a 
strange  voice  in  the  air,  thin,  insect-like,  unknown. 
By  the  time  it  had  sounded  twice  the  sleeper  was 
wide-awake,  with  his  opera-glass  in  play.  The 
voice  came  from  yonder  thin  clump  of  creosote 
bushes.  Yes,  the  bird  flits  into  sight  —  a  gnat- 
catcher  ;  and  being  a  gnatcatcher,  with  such  a 
note,  it  must  be  "  the  other  one,"  known  as  the 
plumbeous,  which  I  have  been  looking  for  ever 
since  my  arrival  in  Tucson.  And  so  it  was  —  a 
pretty  creature  with  a  jaunty  black  cap.  I  shall 
know  him  henceforth,  I  hope,  even  without  see- 
ing him.  We  are  fortunate,  both  of  us,  I  take 
leave  to  say,  to  have  made  each  other's  acquaint- 
ance on  so  ideal  an  afternoon. 

The  gnatcatcher  disappeared,  and  the  dreamer 
was  just  dozing  off  again,  when  two  large  birds 
were  seen  to  be  having  a  hot  encounter,  high 
overhead.  This  time  the  field-glass  came  into  re- 
quisition. A  raven  was  teasing  a  red-tailed  hawk, 
with  all  a  raven's  pertinacity  and  spite.  Again 
and  again  and  again  he  swooped  upon  him,  while 
the  hawk  ducked  and  turned  to  avoid  the  stroke. 
Why  the  big  fellow,  biggest  of  all  our  hawks, 
larger  and  stronger  in  every  way  than  the  raven, 
did  not  face  his  tormentor  and  lay  him  out  was  a 
mystery.  I  confess,  I  should  have  been  glad  to 


220  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

see  him  do  it.  Instead,  he  made  off  toward  the 
mountains,  and  after  a  long  chase  and  much  croak- 
ing, the  raven  turned  away. 

This  also  had  passed  out  of  mind,  and  I  was 
on  my  way  homeward,  barely  putting  one  foot 
before  the  other,  enjoying  the  air  and  the  sun, 
—  and  the  mountains,  —  when,  happening  to 
glance  upward,  I  beheld  a  grand  sight.  "  That 's 
the  golden  eagle,"  I  said  aloud  (in  the  desert  a 
man  soon  falls  into  the  neighborly  habit  of  talk- 
ing to  himself),  and  one  look  through  the  field- 
glass  proved  the  words  correct.  The  great  bird 
was  in  perfect  light,  sailing  in  circles,  so  that  his 
upper  parts  came  every  minute  into  full  view  as 
he  swung  about,  the  old  gold  of  the  head  and 
neck,  as  well  as  the  contrasted  brown  and  black 
of  the  wings,  perfectly  displayed,  with  nothing 
left  for  guesswork.  I  was  all  eyes,  and  watched 
him  and  watched  him,  admiring  especially  the 
firm  set  of  his  wings,  till  he,  too,  sailed  away,  not 
chased,  but  moving  of  his  own  royal  will,  and 
dropped  at  last  out  of  sight  behind  the  rolling 
desert. 

He  was  my  first  golden  eagle,  in  some  respects 
one  of  the  noblest  of  all  North  American  birds.  I 
knew  him  to  be  not  uncommon  in  the  mountains, 
and  had  hoped  some  day  to  see  him  passing,  es- 
pecially when  I  should  be  far  out  on  the  edge  of 


AN  IDLE  AFTERNOON  221 

the  foothills ;  and  behold,  here  he  was  on  my  idle 
afternoon,  close  at  home.  Who  says  that  the  lame 
and  the  lazy  are  not  provided  for  ? 

My  dreamy  saunter  was  turning  out  ornitho- 
logical in  spite  of  myself,  and  as  if  the  gnatcatcher 
and  the  eagle  had  not  done  enough  to  that  end, 
the  ubiquitous  raven  now  took  a  hand  at  the 
business.  My  thoughts  were  just  settling  back 
into  vacancy,  when  the  ravens  were  seen  to  be 
commencing  their  regular  afternoon  progress  to 
their  roosting  grounds,  wherever  those  may  be, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  city.  A  detachment  of 
some  scores  was  already  on  the  move.  And  pre- 
sently I  observed  what  was  to  me  a  strange  and 
interesting  thing,  although,  for  aught  I  can  affirm 
to  the  contrary,  it  may  be  only  an  every-day  oc- 
currence. 

A  great  part  of  the  birds  were  playing  by  twos, 
one  chasing  the  other,  as  if  engaged  in  a  frolic  to 
which  all  parties  were  perfectly  accustomed.  I 
had  not  expected  such  a  pitch  of  levity  on  the 
part  of  these  black-suited,  and  as  I  should  have 
thought,  rather  gloomy-natured  scavengers.  But 
they  were  going  to  roost,  and  like  children  at  the 
hour  of  bedtime,  they  were  making  a  lark  of  it. 
Perhaps  the  day's  picking  had  been  uncommonly 
good ;  they  had  been  over  by  a  certain  cattle- 
slaughtering  establishment ;  something,  at  all 


222  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

events,  had  put  them  in  high  spirits,  and  so  Tom 
was  having  it  out  with  Dick,  and  Bob  with  Harry. 
To  look  at  them,  it  seemed  as  much  fun  as  a  pil- 
low-fight, and  as  I  have  said,  the  greater  part  of 
the  flock  were  engaged  in  it. 

But  the  point  I  started  to  speak  of  was  not 
the  game  itself,  but  a  certain  acrobatic  feat  by 
which  it  was  accompanied.  Again  and  again,  in 
the  course  of  their  doublings  and  duckings,  I 
saw  the  birds  turn  what  looked  to  be  a  complete 
sidewise  somersault.  It  may  have  been  an  optical 
illusion ;  probably  it  was ;  but  if  so,  it  was  ab- 
solute. Sure  I  am  that  more  than  once  I  saw  a 
bird  flat  on  his  back  in  the  air  (as  flat  on  his 
back  as  ever  a  swimmer  was  in  water),  and  to  all 
appearance,  as  I  say,  he  did  not  turn  back,  but 
came  up  like  a  flash  on  the  other  side.  Fact  or 
illusion,  clean  over  or  halfway  over,  it  was  a 
clever  trick,  and  I  could  not  wonder  that  the 
birds  seemed  to  take  pleasure  in  its  repetition. 
I  imagined  they  were  as  proud  of  it  as  a  young 
gymnast  ever  was  of  his  newly  acquired  back 
handspring.  And  why  not  ?  A  man  must  be  ex- 
tremely well  contented  with  himself,  or  possess  a 
feeble  imagination,  not  to  feel  sometimes  a  twinge 
of  envy  at  sight  of  a  bird's  superiorities,1 

1  The  trick  was  seen  to  fuller  advantage  on  subsequent  occa- 
sions, and  I  came  to  the  settled  conclusion  that  the  birds  turned 


AN  IDLE  AFTERNOON  223 

And  while  one  flock  of  ravens  were  playing 
"  it "  in  this  brilliant  fashion,  another  and  larger 
flock  were  sailing  in  mazy  circles  after  the  man- 
ner of  sea-gulls;  a  fascinating  spectacle,  to  be 
witnessed  here  every  afternoon  by  any  who  will 
be  at  the  trouble  to  look  up.  More  than  once  I 
have  watched  hundreds  of  the  birds  thus  engaged, 
not  all  at  the  same  elevation,  be  it  understood, 
but  circle  above  circle  —  a  kind  of  Jacob's  ladder 
—  till  the  top  ones  were  almost  at  heaven's  gate. 
It  is  a  good  time  to  be  out  on  the  desert  when  the 
ravens  are  going  to  roost.  And  what  with  their 
soarings  and  tumblings,  I  have  begun  to  think 
that  perhaps  the  big  hawk  was  not  such  an  ab- 
solute fool,  after  all,  to  decline  an  aerial  combat. 
The  white-necked  raven  may  be  only  a  little  larger 
kind  of  crow,  but  he  is  a  wonder  on  the  wing. 

but  halfway  over ;  that  is  to  say,  they  lay  on  their  backs  for 
an  instant,  and  then,  as  by  the  recoil  of  a  spring,  recovered 
themselves.  How  they  acquired  the  trick,  and  for  what  pur- 
pose they  practice  it,  are  questions  beyond  my  answering. 
Since  my  return  home,  indeed,  I  have  discovered  that  Gilbert 
White,  who  noted  so  many  things,  noted  this  same  habit  on 
the  part  of  the  European  raven.  According  to  him,  the  birds 
"lose  the  centre  of  gravity "  while  "scratching  themselves 
with  one  foot."  How  he  knows  this  he  does  not  inform  us,  and 
I  must  confess  myself  unconvinced. 


SHY  LIFE  IN  THE  DESEKT 

AFTER  the  desert  and  the  mountains,  and  some 
of  the  longer-desired  birds,  I  have  enjoyed  few 
sights  in  Arizona  more  than  that  of  two  coyotes. 
Old  beaters  about  the  wilds  of  this  Western 
country  will  be  ready  to  scoff,  I  dare  say,  at  so 
simple  a  confession.  "  Two  coyotes,  indeed  I  A 
great  sight,  that !  "  So  I  think  I  hear  them  say- 
ing. Well,  they  are  welcome  to  their  fun.  It  is 
kindly  ordered,  the  world  being  mostly  a  dull 
place,  that  men  shall  be  mutually  amusing,  and 
there  is  no  great  harm  in  being  laughed  at,  pro- 
vided it  be  done  behind  one's  back. 

The  fact  remains,  then,  as  I  state  it.  To  me 
the  coyotes  were  very  interesting  and  unexpected 
beasts.  And  the  pleasure  of  my  encounter  with 
them  was  heightened  materially  (this,  too,  is  a 
laughable  admission  ;  I  know  it  as  well  as  any- 
body), when  I  learned  that  hereabouts,  whatever 
may  be  true  elsewhere,  it  was  to  be  esteemed  a 
piece  of  rather  extraordinary  luck,  unlikely  to 
be  soon  repeated.  To  all  men  of  science,  though 
they  be  nothing  but  amateurs  and  dabsters,  rar- 
ity is  one  of  the  cardinal  virtues  of  a  specimen. 


SHY  LIFE  IN  THE  DESERT  225 

My  good  fortune,  be  it  accounted  greater  or 
less,  came  about  in  this  way. 

Six  or  seven  miles  across  the  desert,  where 
the  plain  comes  to  an  end  at  the  buried  Rillito 
River,  and  the  foothills  of  the  Catalinas  begin 
to  rise  from  the  opposite  bank,  are  the  adobe 
ruins  (hospital,  barracks,  and  what  not)  of  Old 
Camp  Lowell,  a  relic  of  the  Apache  wars.  I  had 
heard  of  the  place  (in  fact,  I  had  been  happy 
enough  to  meet  a  young  man  who  is  camping 
there  with  his  brother),  and  started  early  one 
morning  to  visit  it. 

Perhaps  it  was  because  of  the  earliness  of  the 
hour,  though  the  sun  was  well  above  the  hori- 
zon; at  any  rate,  I  had  gone  but  a  short  dis- 
tance before  my  steps  were  arrested  by  the  sight 
of  a  gray,  long-legged,  wolfish-looking  animal 
not  far  ahead.  He  had  seen  me  first,  I  think 
(strange  if  he  had  not,  so  alert  as  every  motion 
showed  him  to  be),  and  was  already  considering 
his  course  of  action,  starting  away,  then  stopping 
to  look  back.  My  glass  covered  him  at  once  (he 
was  easily  within  gunshot),  and  then,  following 
a  turn  of  his  head,  I  saw  that  he  had  a  compan- 
ion. The  second  one  had  already  crossed  the 
trail,  and  the  question  between  the  two  seemed 
to  be  whether  he  should  come  back  or  the  other 
should  follow  him.  The  point  was  quickly  de- 


226  TEXAS  AND   ARIZONA 

cided ;  the  second  one  recrossed  the  trail,  and 
the  two  ran  off  among  the  creosote  clumps  on 
the  left,  and  in  a  few  seconds  were  lost ;  but  the 
hesitation  had  given  me  time  to  note  their  color, 
size,  build  (especially  their  long,  sharp,  collie- 
shaped  noses),  and  their  general  appearance  and 
action,  all  very  "  doggy." 

This,  as  I  have  said,  was  but  a  little  way  be- 
yond the  university  buildings,  and,  knowing  no 
better,  I  assumed  the  occurrence  to  be  a  common 
one,  and  spoke  of  it  in  a  matter-of-fact  tone  to 
the  campers  at  the  fort.  They  exclaimed  at  once 
that  I  had  been  surprisingly  fortunate ;  they 
themselves,  passing  their  days  and  nights  in  the 
desert,  seldom  or  never  saw  one  of  the  animals, 
though  they  often  heard  them  barking  after 
dark.  The  circumstantiality  of  my  description, 
and  it  may  be  their  politeness,  —  for  they  were 
gentlemen,  "  baching  it "  here  for  the  older 
brother's  health,  —  made  it  impossible  for  them 
to  suggest  a  doubt  as  to  the  identity  of  the  ani- 
mals ;  but  I  had  no  difficulty  in  perceiving  that 
if  I  wished  to  pass  as  a  man  of  veracity  among 
ordinary  dwellers  hereabouts  I  must  not  see  coy- 
otes too  frequently.  In  point  of  fact,  the  very 
next  man  to  whom  I  mentioned  the  circumstance, 
a  man  who  has  lived  here  for  several  years,  on 
the  rim  of  the  desert,  answered  promptly: 


SHY  LIFE  IN  THE  DESERT  227 

"  They  were  n't  jack  rabbits,  were  they  ?  "  He 
had  never  seen  a  coyote  in  Arizona,  he  said, 
though  he  had  seen  plenty  in  Colorado. 

As  for  the  big  jack  rabbits,  if  I  have  not  seen 
"  plenty  "  of  them  (and  I  cannot  truthfully  pro- 
fess so  much  as  that),  I  have  seen  a  good  many. 
One  cannot  walk  far  in  the  desert,  with  his  eyes 
ranging,  without  discovering,  to  right  or  left  or 
in  advance,  a  pair  of  long  ears,  followed  by  a 
black  tail,  making  quick  time  out  of  sight. 
Generally  the  creatures  seem  to  run  by  fits  and 
starts  ("  leaps  and  bounds  and  sudden  stops  " 
would  express  it) ,  but  the  other  morning  a  fellow 
had  evidently  been  frightened  almost  out  of  his 
five  senses  by  something  —  not  by  me  —  when 
a  long  way  from  home.  There  were  no  stops 
in  his  schedule.  Straight  across  the  desert  he 
bounded,  going  like  an  express  train  —  a  mile  a 
minute  at  the  very  least. 

So  lively  as  these  large  rabbits  are  (there  is  a 
smaller  kind  that  I  have  not  yet  seen1)  they 
would  be  as  interesting  as  the  much  larger  coy- 
otes but  for  their  greater  commonness.  For 
grace  and  lightness,  as  well  as  speed,  their  gait 
is  next  to  flying.  All  the  words  in  the  dictionary 

1  They  are  not  to  be  found  on  the  desert,  I  afterward 
learned,  but  along  the  watercourses.  There  I  often  saw 
them. 


228  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

could  not  describe  it.  I  never  see  one  on  the 
move  without  admiration  and  an  impulse  to  give 
him  three  cheers.  Surely,  man  is  a  slow  coach, 
and  a  race-horse  is  clumsy. 

To  one  who  comes  this  way  for  the  first  time 
in  winter,  as  I  have  come  (and  may  Heaven  save 
me  from  ever  being  here  in  summer,  so  long 
at  least  as  I  am  in  an  embodied  state !),  the 
desert  seems  thinly  inhabited.  Of  the  scarcity 
of  bird-life  upon  it  I  have  before  spoken ;  and 
the  reason  is  obvious:  there  is  little  here  for 
birds  to  feed  upon.  The  smaller  quadrupeds, 
too,  are  of  surprising  infrequency.  Once  in  a 
long  while  a  striped  squirrel,  as  I  should  call  it, 
with  its  tail  over  its  back,  will  be  seen  squatting 
beside  a  hole  in  the  ground,  ready  to  slip  into  it 
long  before  you  can  get  near  ;  and  somewhat 
oftener  a  gray,  rat-tailed,  big-eyed  squirrel  (if  it 
is  a  squirrel  —  I  have  only  half  seen  it)  will 
dart  across  an  open  space,  tail  in  air,  barely  vis- 
ible before  it,  too,  has  ducked  into  its  burrow ; 
but  two  or  three  such  small  fry,  with  as  many 
jack  rabbits,  in  the  course  of  a  half -day  tramp, 
do  not  go  far  toward  constituting  anything  to  be 
accounted  populousness. 

One  morning  I  walked  out  upon  the  desert 
immediately  after  a  snowfall.  It  would  be  a  fa- 
vorable time,  I  thought,  to  study  zoological  hiero- 


SHY  LIFE  IN  THE  DESERT  229 

glyphies  ;  and  I  believe  I  walked  a  mile  before 
I  saw  a  single  footprint.  Think  of  doing  that,  or 
anything  like  it,  in  our  poor,  frost-bitten,  winter- 
killed, over-civilized  New  England !  The  tracks 
would  have  been  a  perfect  crisscross. 

And,  notwithstanding  all  this,  footprints  or  no 
footprints,  the  desert  is  not  without  its  own  world 
of  little  people.  It  is  a  desert  only  to  our  dull, 
provincial,  self-absorbed,  self-sufficient,  narrow- 
minded,  egotistical  human  apprehension  of  it. 
So  much  ought  to  be  plain  as  day  to  the  most 
undiscerning  traveler  ;  for  if  he  so  much  as  looks 
where  he  steps  (lest  a  snake  should  bite  him),  he 
cannot  help  seeing  that  the  ground  all  about  is 
almost  as  full  of  holes  as  a  colander.  Larger 
and  smaller,  the  earth  is  riddled  with  them.  If 
the  diggers  of  the  holes  happen  to  be  just  now 
within  doors  instead  of  gadding  abroad  like  so 
many  restless  tourists,  probably  their  conduct  is 
not  without  a  reason.  Possibly  they  object  to 
cold  feet.  More  likely  they  have  an  eye  to  bodily 
safety.  One  thing  you  may  wager  upon,  home- 
keepers  though  they  be  —  the  sharpness  of  their 
wits. 

Whatever  would  live  on  this  bare,  open  plain 
must  be  as  wise  as  a  serpent.  The  remainder  of 
the  text  may  be  omitted  as  locally  inapplicable. 
The  desert-dweller  —  Deserticola,  as  we  name 


230  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

him  in  zoological  Latin  —  must  know  the  times 
and  the  seasons,  and  catch  the  scent  of  danger 
afar  off.  You  will  find  no  trustful  innocence  in 
these  diggings.  If  there  ever  was  any,  it  long 
ago  perished.  Everything  is  shy,  and  has  need 
to  be.  "  Nature  red  in  tooth  and  claw  "  has  here 
its  ancestral  seat.  He  that  cannot  fight  must 
run ;  and  however  it  may  be  elsewhere,  in  the 
desert  the  race  is  to  the  swift  and  the  battle  to 
the  strong.  In  one  way  or  another  everything 
goes  armed.  It  may  be  set  with  thorns  like  the 
mesquite  and  the  cactus,  or  it  may  have  an  offen- 
sive oil  like  the  creosote ;  it  may  run  like  the 
rabbit,  or  strike  like  the  rattlesnake.  If  it  can 
do  nothing  else,  it  must  hide.  And  even  the 
strong  and  the  speedy  must  hide  when  that  which 
is  stronger  and  speedier  heaves  in  sight.  The 
desert  is  open  to  the  sky,  but  its  life  is  not  open. 
Like  the  currents  of  the  rivers,  the  current  of 
animal  existence  runs  mostly  underground. 

A  Tucson  business  man  was  telling  me  about 
the  great  antiquity  of  the  town :  the  oldest  set- 
tlement in  the  country,  I  think  he  called  it,  with 
the  exception  of  St.  Augustine,  Florida. 

"  But  how  in  the  world  came  a  city  to  grow 
up  here  ?  "  I  inquired.  "  I  can  see  no  sufficient 
reason." 

"  Well,"  said  he,  as  if  he  could  think  of  no- 


SHY  LIFE  IN  THE  DESERT  231 

tiling  else,  "  the  river  comes  to  the  surface  here, 
you  know." 

He  spoke  of  the  Santa  Cruz.  And  it  is  true. 
The  river  comes  to  the  surface ;  the  stretch  of 
watered  farms  and  the  brimming  irrigation 
ditches  bear  witness  to  the  fact ;  but  it  does  not 
stay  there.  I  have  frequent  occasion  to  go  over 
the  four  roads  that  cross  it  from  the  city.  On  the 
southernmost  of  these,  where  Mexican  women 
are  always  to  be  seen  washing  clothes,  spreading 
the  garment  over  a  stone  and  beating  it  clean 
with  a  stick  ("  mangling,"  I  should  suppose  the 
word  ought  to  be),  carriages  drive  through  the 
stream,  while  foot-passengers  cross  by  means  of 
stepping-stones  ;  six  or  eight  boulders  of  the  size 
of  a  man's  head,  perhaps,  picked  up  at  random 
and  laid  in  a  row.  The  next  road  is  furnished 
with  a  bridge,  though  it  is  hard  to  see  why.  The 
other  two  (they  are  all  within  the  distance  .of  a 
mile)  have  neither  bridge  nor  stepping-stones, 
nor  need  of  any.  The  river  bottom,  so  called, 
though  it  is  rather  roof  than  bottom,  is  as  dry  as 
the  Sahara. 

So  it  is  with  the  Rillito,  and,  I  suppose,  with 
all  the  rivers  of  the  desert.  They  are  shy  crea- 
tures. They  love  not  the  garish  day.  Like  the 
saints  of  old  and  the  capitalists  of  our  own 
time,  they  abhor  publicity.  Water,  they  think, 


232  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

should  n't  be  too  much  in  sight.  With  the  squir- 
rel and  the  rabbit,  they  live  mostly  in  burrows. 

Of  certain  more  highly  specialized  inhabit- 
ants of  the  desert  —  rattlesnakes,  Gila  monsters, 
tarantulas,  and  the  like  —  a  winter  stroller  can 
have  little  or  nothing  to  relate.  They  are  all 
here,  no  doubt,  and  will  disport  themselves  in 
their  season.  No  midsummer  sun  will  be  too  hot 
for  them.  For  myself,  in  three  weeks'  wandering 
I  have  seen  one  lizard,  nothing  else.  And  it,  too, 
was  shy,  legging  it  for  shelter ;  running,  literally, 
"  like  a  streak."  That  was  really  all  that  I  saw 
—  a  streak  of  brown  over  the  gray  sand.  I  was 
neither  a  road-runner  nor  a  hawk,  and  for  that 
time  the  lizard  was  more  scared  than  hurt. 

If  this  shy  life  of  the  desert  is  happy,  as  I 
believe  it  is,  after  its  manner  and  according  to 
its  measure,  we  can  only  admire  once  more  the 
beneficent  effect  of  use  and  custom.  The  safest  of 
us  are  always  in  danger.  Whether  we  tread  the 
sands  of  the  desert  or  the  shaded  paths  of  some 
Garden  of  Eden,  our  steps  all  tend  to  one  end, 
the  one  event  that  happeneth  alike  to  all ;  and 
if  we,  who  look  before  and  after,  go  on  our  way 
smiling,  why  not  the  humbler  and  presumably 
less  sensitive  people  whose  homes  are  under  the 
roots  of  the  creosote  bushes  ? 


A  NEW  ACQUAINTANCE 

A  STUDENT  of  nature,  differing  from  some  less 
fortunate  folk  that  one  meets  at  wintering  places, 
is  never  at  a  loss  what  to  do  with  his  day.  In  a 
strange  land,  at  least  (the  stranger  the  better), 
he  possesses  one  of  the  prime  requisites  of  a  con- 
tented life :  he  knows  every  night  what  is  on  his 
docket  for  the  morrow.  His  days,  so  to  express 
it,  are  all  dovetailed  together.  Tuesday's  work 
is  to  finish  Monday's ;  Wednesday's  is  to  finish 
Tuesday's ;  and  so  the  weeks  run  by.  What  could 
be  simpler,  or  more  conducive  to  cheerfulness? 
A  day  should  have  a  motive,  as  well  as  a  piece 
of  music  or  a  poem. 

I  am  still  at  Tucson.  Two  mornings  ago  there 
was  but  one  thing  for  me  to  do.  I  knew  it  before 
I  rose.  I  must  take  the  half -past  seven  horse-car, 
ride  down  town  as  far  as  Simpson  Street,  walk 
thence  across  the  Santa  Cruz  Valley  to  the  base 
of  Tucson  Mountain,  and  from  there  follow  the 
narrow  road  that  winds  between  the  foot  of  the 
cliffs  and  the  old  canal,  till  I  came  to  a  certain 
bush.  The  name  of  this  bush  I  cannot  give,  not 
knowing  it,  but  it  bears  millions  of  small,  fleshy 


234  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

leaves,  and,  what  is  more  to  the  present  purpose, 
is  covered  with  thousands,  if  not  millions,  of 
small  purple  flowers. 

I  had  noticed  it  for  the  first  time  the  forenoon 
before ;  and  I  noticed  it  then  because,  as  I  passed, 
I  heard  to  my  great  surprise  and  intense  grati- 
fication the  buzz  of  a  hummingbird's  wings.  I 
was  not  in  the  least  expecting  to  see  any  bird  of 
that  sort  during  my  brief  winter's  stay  in  Ari- 
zona ;  and  which  is  better,  ornithologically  speak- 
ing, to  find  the  long  expected  or  the  unexpected, 
is  a  point  that  wiser  heads  than  mine  may  settle. 
For  myself,  either  happening  will  do,  so  it  be  not 
too  infrequent. 

My  eyes  turned  of  themselves  in  the  right 
direction,  and  there  at  my  elbow  was  the  tiny, 
emerald-backed,  familiar-looking  beauty,  hover- 
ing before  the  blossoms  of  this  spreading  bush. 
It  was  only  for  a  second  or  two.  Then  for  an- 
other such  period  he  perched  on  the  slender  tip 
of  the  nearest  mesquite,  and  then  was  away  on 
the  wings  of  the  wind.  I  waited  for  his  return, 
but  not  long  enough,  and  came  back  to  the  city, 
wondering. 

His  upper  parts,  as  I  say,  were  green,  and  he 
looked  at  a  first  glance  much  like  our  common 
ruby-throat  of  the  East.  But  in  the  few  seconds 
that  my  eye  followed  him  —  a  time  too  short  for 


A  NEW  ACQUAINTANCE  235 

catching  myself  up  and  making  sure  even  of  the 
little  I  had  seen  —  I  received  an  impression  (it 
was  nothing  more)  of  a  black  head  as  well  as  of 
a  black  throat.  If  the  impression  was  correct, 
the  bird  could  not  be  a  ruby-throat,  and  besides, 
unless  my  memory  was  at  fault,  the  ruby-throat 
was  not  to  be  looked  for  in  this  longitude.  I 
must  see  the  handbook. 

A  reference  to  that  authority  showed  that  eight 
species  of  hummingbirds  had  been  reported  from 
the  Catalina  Mountains,  but  not  the  ruby-throat. 
Of  the  two  or  three  common  ones  among  the 
eight,  the  most  likely  candidate  seemed  to  be  the 
black-chinned,  Trochilus  alexandri,  though  that 
bird's  crown  is  not  black.  Probably  my  impres- 
sion upon  that  point  had  been  erroneous ;  so  sur- 
prised and  hurried  as  I  had  been,  a  measure  of 
inexactness  was  rather  to  be  looked  for.  At  all 
events,  it  was  impossible  to  make  out  how  the 
bird  could  be  any  one  of  the  other  seven.  By 
the  rule  of  exclusion  —  a  pretty  safe  rule,  I  told 
myself  —  he  ought  to  be  a  black-chin. 

So  the  matter  rested,  not  much  to  my  satisfac- 
tion, till  the  next  morning.  Then,  as  I  have  al- 
ready said,  I  went  immediately  after  breakfast 
to  stand  beside  that  blossoming  bush  until  the 
bird  should  again  show  himself.  If  my  confidence 
that  he  would  be  there,  in  that  precise  spot,  no 


236  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

different  from  thousands  of  others  in  all  those 
miles  and  miles  of  country,  all  so  exactly  alike, 
beside  that  particular  bush,  itself  like  thousands 
of  others,  —  if  my  confidence  seems  presumptu- 
ous, as  to  many  readers  I  dare  say  it  will,  I  can 
only  profess  that  it  was  based  upon  no  small  ac- 
quaintance with  the  ruby-throat's  habit  of  fre- 
quenting day  after  day  the  same  tree,  and  even 
the  same  twig,  as  a  resting-place,  or  post .  of  ob- 
servation. It  was  not  at  all  unlikely,  I  reasoned, 
that  the  black-chin's  habit  would  prove  to  be 
similar.  At  any  rate,  there  was  no  harm  in  pro- 
ceeding upon  that  hypothesis. 

I  went  at  once  to  the  place,  therefore,  took 
a  favorable  position  with  the  sun  at  my  back, 
focused  my  eight-power  glass  to  a  nicety  upon 
the  topmost  twig  of  the  mesquite  bush  (quarter 
seconds  might  be  precious),  and  waited.  As  the 
capable  reader  has  already  divined,  the  bird  did 
not  fail  me,  nor  keep  me  long  in  suspense.  There 
was  a  sound  of  wings,  and  in  another  instant  the 
hummer  stood  on  the  top  spray  of  the  mesquite. 
And  his  crown  was  black,  like  his  throat.  He 
could  not  be  alexandri.  But  before  I  had  time 
to  take  in  the  full  awkwardness  of  my  dilemma 
—  since  I  had  already  ruled  the  other  seven 
species  out  of  the  account  —  the  bird  turned  his 
head  to  one  side,  the  sun  struck  him  at  the  right 


A  NEW  ACQUAINTANCE  237 

angle,  and  behold,  his  gorget  had  long,  flaring 
wings,  like  the  loose  ends  of  a  broad  necktie,  or, 
to  use  the  homely  comparison  which  occurred  to 
me  at  the  moment,  like  a  pair  of  big  mutton-chop 
whiskers,  and  was  no  longer  black,  but  of  a  most 
exquisite  and  brilliant  shade  of  violet.  The  radi- 
ant vision  shone  upon  me  for  an  instant ;  then, 
at  another  movement  of  the  head,  all  was  black 
again,  and  in  another  instant  the  bird  was  gone. 

Now,  then,  I  began  to  see  daylight.  The  bird, 
having  a  ruff,  was  not  of  the  genus  Trochilus, 
and  the  question  was  so  far  simplified,  though  it 
would  be  necessary  to  consult  the  book  again 
before  it  could  be  settled.  Meanwhile,  I  must 
by  all  means  have  another  look  at  the  beauty. 
Such  splendor  of  color  was  worth  waiting  for, 
though  it  came  only  in  flashes.  And  I  waited. 
But  though  the  creature  finally  returned  to  the 
mesquite  he  persisted  in  sitting  with  his  back  to 
the  sun,  and  I  came  away  without  seeing  him 
again  transfigured. 

Another  reference  to  the  handbook,  and  I  knew 
him  for  Calypte  costce,  the  Costa  hummingbird. 
But  now  mark  how  one  day's  work  is  linked 
with  another's.  The  book  informed  me  that  the 
crown,  as  well  as  the  gorget  and  the  ruff,  was 
"  brilliantly  burnished  amethyst  violet."  I  had 
not  seen  that,  doubtless  because  the  light  had  not 


238  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

fallen  upon  the  crown  at  the  necessary  angle. 
The  detail  must  nevertheless  be  verified.  Here, 
then,  was  my  business  for  to-morrow. 

I  was  late  in  arriving,  —  a  full  hour,  at  least, 
behind  my  appointment,  —  having  walked  the 
whole  distance  this  time,  and  by  a  roundabout 
course;  and  the  hummer  was  waiting  for  me. 
"  You  are  late,"  I  fancied  him  saying ;  but  of 
course  that  was  my  "pathetic  fallacy."  In  the 
course  of  my  stay  he  "  gave  me  three  sittings," 
as  my  penciled  memorandum  puts  it,  and  I  saw 
that  his  forehead  and  a  spot  behind  the  ear  were 
of  the  same  dazzling,  indescribably  beautiful  color 
as  the  gorget  and  ruff.  The  whole  crown  I  did 
not  see  illuminated,  but  the  forehead  sufficed. 

At  one  time  a  ruby-crowned  kinglet  came  and 
played  about  in  the  same  bush,  and  in  that  com- 
parison he  seemed  almost  a  giant.  "  The  hum- 
mer is  smaller  and  smaller,"  my  pencil  remarked, 
"  every  time  I  see  him."  I  might  have  addressed 
him  as  Charles  Lamb  addressed  the  shade  of 
Elliston,  when  he  saw  that  worthy,  all  his  stage 
trappings  removed,  seated  in  Charon's  boat,  — 
"  Bless  me,  how  little  you  look." 

The  identification  was  now  complete.  I  had 
doubled  my  list  of  hummingbirds,  having  seen 
but  one  species  in  all  my  previous  years,  and  the 
next  morning  I  might  reasonably  have  turned 


A  NEW  ACQUAINTANCE  239 

my  steps  elsewhere.  But  when  the  hour  came 
round  I  could  think  of  nothing  else  I  wanted  so 
much  to  do  as  to  see  that  hummer  again.  And  I 
followed  my  inclination.  It  was  well  I  did. 

We  were  both  prompt.  As  I  drew  near  I  saw 
the  tiny  creature  perched  as  usual  at  the  tip  of 
the  mesquite.  How  many  times  he  came  and 
went  during  the  hour  that  I  stayed  by  him  I  fail 
to  remember ;  but  on  the  second  or  third  occa- 
sion a  verdin  happened  into  the  neighborhood. 
The  hummer  descended  upon  him  hotly,  drove 
him  away  in  no  time,  and  then,  as  if  in  celebra- 
tion of  his  triumph,  mounted  straight  into  the 
air  till  he  was  like  a  dot,  and  came  down  again 
almost  vertically  to  his  perch.  It  was  a  brilliant 
and  lovely  display,  an  ebullition  of  vital  spirits 
well  worth  a  forenoon  of  any  man's  life  to  wit- 
ness. There  are  city  parades,  hours  in  length, 
with  martial  music  and  all  manner  of  bright  re- 
galia, that  might  better  be  skipped.  And  a  few 
minutes  later,  the  enemy  having  returned,  the 
entire  performance  was  repeated,  ecstatic  flight, 
vertical  drop  and  all.  The  verdin's  presence,  it 
appeared,  was  extremely  annoying  to  the  hum- 
mer. This  place  was  %his.  Trespassing  was  for- 
bidden, and  the  verdin  ought  to  know  it. 

Once,  watching  for  another  flash  of  color,  I 
had  my  glass  on  the  hummer  as  he  sat  quiet. 


240  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

Suddenly  the  verdin  began  sputtering  to  himself, 
after  his  manner,  a  little  way  off.  Quick  as 
thought  the  hummer  cocked  his  head,  waited  an 
instant  as  if  to  make  sure  he  had  heard  correctly 
(it  seemed  impossible,  I  suppose,  after  such  a 
drubbing),  and  then,  like  a  bullet  out  of  a  gun, 
flew  at  the  persistent  intruder.  His  spirit  was 
wonderful,  and  being  roused  to  his  work,  he  fin- 
ished by  descending  at  full  speed  upon  a  black 
phosbe  that  just  then  blundered  innocently  along. 
The  big  flycatcher,  many  times  bigger  than  the 
hummer,  —  but  so  is  a  man  many  times  bigger 
than  a  rifle  ball,  —  did  not  stand  upon  the  order 
of  his  going,  but  went  at  once.  I  did  not  wonder. 
The  fellow  might  have  driven  me  away,  also,  had 
he  taken  it  into  his  head  to  try.  He  was  irre- 
sistible. Talk  of  a  strenuous  life  ! 

At  another  time  he  darted  from  his  perch  in 
a  quite  unwonted  direction,  and  flew  on  the  line 
to  a  palo-verde  shrub  off  on  the  hillside.  The 
verdin  was  there,  it  turned  out,  down  at  the  very 
bottom  of  the  bush,  —  though  to  my  senses  he 
had  made  no  sign,  —  and  must  be  dislodged  forth- 
with. 

Why  the  hummer  offered  no  objection  to 
the  kinglet's  presence  is  beyond  my  knowledge. 
Perhaps  he  took  into  account  the  fact  that  the 
kinglet  was  here  only  for  the  whiter ;  for  it  was 


A  NEW  ACQUAINTANCE  241 

impossible  not  to  surmise  that  the  hummer  had 
selected  this  particular  spot  for  his  summer 
home,  and  as  such  meant  to  hold  it  against  all 
comers,  exercising  over  it  all  the  rights  of  sov- 
ereignty. Let  the  verdin  and  the  phrebe  go 
elsewhere. 

The  phoabe  pretty  certainly  would  have  gone 
elsewhere,  hummer  or  no  hummer.  As  to  what 
the  verdin  will  conclude  to  do,  things  being  as 
they  are,  my  mind  is  less  clearly  made  up.  He 
is  not  so  swift  as  his  bullet  of  a  rival,  but  I  fancy 
him  to  be  a  pretty  dogged  fighter,  able  to  be 
whipped  a  good  many  times  without  finding  it 
out.  Still,  as  between  the  two,  if  I  were  com- 
pelled to  wager,  I  think  I  should  risk  my  money 
on  the  hummingbird. 


THE  DESERT  REJOICES 

WHAT  was  foretold  in  Judea  is  fulfilled  in 
Arizona — the  desert  has  blossomed  like  the 
rose. 

I  could  hardly  believe  it,  a  month  ago,  when  a 
Tucson  business  man,  who  in  the  kindness  of 
his  heart  had  turned  the  city  upside  down,  al- 
most, seeking  to  find  a  home  for  a  man  who  was 
not  a  consumptive  and  did  not  wish  to  live  in  a 
hospital  or  a  pest-house  —  I  could  hardly  believe 
it,  I  repeat,  when  he  said  :  "  Oh,  you  must  n't 
go  back  to  Texas  yet.  You  must  stay  and  see 
the  desert  in  bloom.  After  these  unusual  rains 
and  snowfalls  it  will  soon  be  all  like  a  flower 
garden."  "  So  may  it  turn  out,"  I  thought ; 
"  but  time  will  tell." 

He  spoke,  according  to  the  privilege  of  pro- 
phets, in  the  language  of  hyperbole  ;  for,  al- 
though his  prediction  has  come  true,  its  fulfill- 
ment is  more  than  a  little  straitened  and  stingy. 
The  desert  has  blossomed,  but  it  is  like  a  flower 
garden  only  in  this  respect  —  that  there  are 
flowers  in  it.  They  are  numbered  by  millions, 
indeed ;  or,  rather,  they  are  beyond  all  thought 


THE  DESERT  REJOICES  243 

of  numeration  ;  but,  as  far  as  the  appearance  of 
the  place  is  concerned,  it  is  scarcely  more  like  a 
flower  garden  than  like  a  billiard  table.  A  care- 
less traveler  —  and  not  so  very  careless,  neither 
—  might  tread  the  blossoms  under  his  feet  for 
miles  without  seeing  so  much  as  one  of  them. 
They  are  desert  flowers  ;  vegetable  Lilliputians ; 
minute,  almost  microscopic,  for  the  most  part, 
as  if  moisture  had  been  doled  out  to  them  by 
the  drop  or  the  thimbleful,  as  indeed  it  has 
been  ;  and  the  few  that  are  larger  have  in  the 
main  a  weedy  aspect,  such  as  blinds  the  eye  of 
the  ordinary  non-observer,  to  whom,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  a  flower  is  one  thing  and  a  weed  an- 
other. As  for  the  tiny  ones,  the  overwhelming 
majority,  a  blossom  that  you  can  see  in  its  place 
only  by  getting  down  on  your  knees  to  look  for 
it  may  be  a  "  flower  "  to  a  botanist,  but  hardly 
to  a  plain,  unlettered,  matter-of-fact  citizen. 

And  still,  after  the  prophetic  manner,  the 
prediction  has  come  true.  The  desert  has  blos- 
somed abundantly.  As  it  now  is,  I  can  imagine 
that  it  would  be  a  place  of  unspeakable  interest 
to  a  philosophic  botanist.  He  would  know,  pre- 
sumably, what  I  do  not,  whether  these  starveling 
races,  existers  upon  nothing,  are  to  be  accounted 
species  by  themselves,  or  only  stunted  representa- 
tives of  species  that  under  favoring  conditions 


244  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

grow  to  a  more  considerable  size.  To  his  mind 
numberless  problems  would  be  suggested  touch- 
ing the  methods  by  which  plants,  sturdy  and 
patient  beings,  adapt  themselves  to  untoward 
circumstances  and  keep  themselves  alive  —  so 
perpetuating  the  race  —  upon  the  chariest  of 
encouragement.  He  would  understand  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  prevailing  hairiness  of  desert- 
inhabiting  species,  as  well  as  of  the  all  but  uni- 
versal light  bluish  or  dusty  color  of  the  foliage ; 
for,  saving  the  yellow-green  creosote,  there  is 
hardly  so  much  as  a  bright  green  leaf  from  one 
end  of  the  desert  to  the  other. 

The  state  of  my  own  unphilosophic  mind  is 
peculiar,  like  the  circumstances  in  which  it  finds 
itself.  It  is  (or  perhaps  it  would  be  more  honest 
to  say,  it  ought  to  be)  humiliating,  but  it  has 
something  of  the  charm  of  novelty. 

I  spoke  a  month  ago  of  my  ornithological  pre- 
dicament when,  newly  arrived  in  Texas,  I  found 
myself  surrounded  by  a  quite  strange  set  of 
birds.  I  was  back  in  the  primer,  I  think  I  said. 
Well,  botanically,  here  in  Tucson,  I  have  retro- 
graded a  long  step  farther  even  than  that.  If  I 
may  say  so,  my  state  is  pre-primeric.  I  am  not 
even  a  primary  scholar.  I  am  no  scholar  at  all. 
My  condition  is  what  it  was  in  childhood,  when 
I  had  never  heard  of  botany.  In  those  days,  in 


THE  DESERT  REJOICES  245 

what  for  some  reason  was  known  as  a  grammar 
school,  we  studied  reading,  writing,  arithmetic, 
geography,  and  grammar.  One  older  girl,  long 
since  dead  (poor  child,  I  can  see  her  now,  recit- 
ing all  by  herself),  studied  "  Watts  on  the 
Mind  I  "  At  the  high  school  we  added  algebra, 
geometry,  Latin,  and  Greek.  As  for  "nature 
study,"  neither  the  name  nor  the  thing  was  ever 
mentioned  to  us.  Mr.  Burroughs  had  not  yet 
written,  and  if  Thoreau  had  written,  his  books 
were  not  yet  heard  of.  Botany  and  Hebrew 
were  alike  absent  from  our  curriculum.  For 
my  own  part,  at  any  rate,  whatever  may  have 
been  true  of  my  cleverer  or  more  home-favored 
contemporaries,  I  neither  knew  the  names  of 
the  flowers  I  saw,  nor  did  I  aspire  to  know 
them.  If  I  ever  thought  of  such  knowledge,  I 
regarded  it  as  permanently  beyond  my  ken. 
Who  was  I,  that  I  should  be  wiser  than  all  my 
betters?  I  contented  myself  with  liking  the 
things  themselves. 

Then,  years  afterward,  I  somehow  began  to 
"  botanize,"  as  we  say,  by  myself ;  and  from  that 
time  to  the  present,  whether  at  home  or  abroad, 
I  have  always  had  a  "  manual "  at  my  elbow  or 
in  my  trunk.  A  strange  flower  must  be  looked 
up  and  set  in  its  place. 

But  now,  in  Arizona,  all  this  is  done.    I  have 


246  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

no  manual.  This  carpet  of  desert  plants  I  walk 
over  almost  without  curiosity,  as  I  might  walk 
*t  over  a  flowery  carpet  in  a  parlor.  Their  names 
are  nothing  more  to  me  than  the  jabberings  of 
the  Mexicans  who  pass  me  on  the  desert  with 
loads  of  wood.  Sometimes,  indeed,  I  guess  at  a 
relationship,  as  now  and  then  I  catch  a  word  of 
Spanish.  This  flower,  I  say,  may  be  a  Mgosotis. 
But  nine  chances  to  one  I  do  not  so  much  as 
guess.  It 's  a  pretty  red  flower,  or  a  dainty  white 
blossom,  and  there  's  an  end  of  it.  As  I  said  just 
now,  the  state  of  my  mind  is  pre-primeric.  I  am 
too  ignorant  even  to  ask  questions. 

A  sad  case,  certainly,  but,  like  sad  cases  in 
general,  it  brings  its  own  partial  compensations. 
I  have  the  more  leisure  for  the  birds,  and  for 
looking  at  the  mountains.  Two  months  ago  it 
would  not  have  seemed  possible,  but  it  has  come 
true  ;  I  can  sit  upon  the  ground  with  half  a 
dozen  kinds  of  unknown  flowers  about  me,  and 
gaze  upon  the  Catalinas  or  the  snow-capped 
Santa  Ritas  as  peacefully  or  rapturously  as  if  I 
had  never  used  a  manual  or  a  pocket  lens  since 
I  was  born.  Have  I  been  converted,  and  become 
as  a  little  child  ?  Possibly ;  but  I  anticipate  a 
speedy  backsliding  when  conditions  alter. 

Yet  I  perceive  that,  like  the  prophet,  I  am 
waxing  tropical,  and  using  language  that  requires 


THE  DESERT  REJOICES  247 

"  interpretation."  There  are  at  least  three  kinds 
of  flowers  in  the  desert  that  are  not  microscopic, 
and  that  I  call  by  name.  They  are  not  very 
numerous  ;  you  may  walk  long  distances  without 
meeting  them  ;  but  they  are  there.  I  mean  the 
evening  primrose,  the  lupine,  and  the  California 
poppy.  The  primrose,  which  is  much  the  com- 
monest of  the  three,  has  no  stalk,  or  none  that 
is  apparent;  the  large,  handsome,  lemon-colored 
flower  opens  directly  from  a  tuft  of  leaves  lying 
flat  on  the  ground.  As  for  the  poppies,  I  should 
hardly  speak  of  them  as  growing  in  the  desert 
but  for  the  fact  that  two  or  three  days  ago  I 
stumbled  upon  a  place  (it  would  be  like  trying 
to  find  a  spot  in  the  ocean  to  look  for  it  again) 
where  the  ground  for  the  space  of  an  acre  or 
more  was  sparsely  sprinkled  with  them.  They 
were  abnormally  small,  and  very  short  in  the 
stem  ;  but  they  were  bright  as  the  sun,  and  be- 
ing lighted  upon  thus  unexpectedly  they  really 
made  the  spot  a  garden.  As  the  prophet  said, 
the  place  was  "  glad  for  them  ;  "  and  so  was  I. 

Both  poppy  and  primrose  (and  the  lupine  as 
well)  are  much  more  at  home  on  the  foothills. 
There,  too,  are  many  flowers  not  to  be  seen  at  all 
on  the  desert.  I  cannot  talk  about  them  for  lack 
of  names.  The  brightest  and  showiest  of  them 
all  is  of  a  vivid,  but,  in  my  vocabulary,  nameless 


248  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

shade  of  red ;  not  scarlet,  nor  crimson,  nor 
orange,  nor  pink,  but  red.  The  plant  stands  a 
foot  or  so  in  height  and  bears  a  dozen,  more  or 
less,  of  rather  large  cup-shaped  blossoms,  the 
lively  color  of  which  would  attract  notice  in  any 
garden. 

A  very  different  favorite  of  mine  (I  have  been 
intimate  with  it  for  a  week)  is  a  low  —  inch- 
high —  composite  flower,  of  the  size  of  a  ten-cent 
piece,  with  seven  or  eight  white  rays  and  a  yel- 
low disk ;  a  dwarf  daisy,  it  looks  to  be,  with 
soft,  cottony  stem  and  leaves.  It  grows  in  the 
driest  and  most  barren  places,  and  as  I  sit  down 
here  and  there  on  the  hillsides  to  rest  (looking 
meanwhile  at  the  green  barley  fields  and  the  ever- 
glorious  mountains)  I  am  sensibly  happier  if  I 
see  this  dainty  bit  of  nature's  loveliness  (a  child, 
not  a  dwarf — I  take  back  the  word)  within  my 
hand's  reach.  It  is  the  very  flower  to  make  a 
pet  of  ;  prettier  by  far  than  if  it  were  taller  and 
showier.  Cultivation  would  spoil  it.  It  was  made 
for  the  desert. 

And  this  reminds  me  to  say  that,  if  the  hills 
are  to  be  counted  as  part  of  the  desert,  as  in  rea- 
son they  may  be,  then  the  prophet's  word  has 
been  fulfilled,  not  partially  but  in  all  strictness. 
The  desert  has  blossomed  like  the  rose.  For  the 
slopes  of  the  Tucson  range  are  literally  on  fire 


THE  DESERT  REJOICES  249 

with  blossoms.  Patches  of  sun-bright  yellow, 
some  of  them  to  all  appearance  an  acre  or  more 
in  extent,  can  be  seen  clear  across  the  plain.  I 
saw  them  yesterday  afternoon  as  I  started  home- 
ward from  Camp  Lowell.  The  distance  could 
hardly  be  less  than  eight  miles,  and  probably 
they  would  have  been  visible  had  it  been  twice 
as  far.  That  the  flowers  are  poppies,  and  not 
blossoms  of  a  smaller  cruciferous  plant  that  is 
very  abundant  and  gregarious  hereabout,  I  am 
confident,  not  only  because  I  am  assured  so  by 
residents  of  the  city,  but  because  the  patches  are 
much  less  conspicuous  in  the  early  forenoon, 
when  poppies  are  not  wide  open,  than  later  in 
the  day.  Some  of  the  patches  (I  can  see  a  dozen 
from  my  window  as  I  write,  fully  five  miles  off  *) 
are  well  toward  the  tops  of  the  mountains,  which, 
needless  to  say,  are  not  of  great  elevation,  per- 
haps four  thousand  feet. 

The  poppy  is  the  Tucson  flower.  Children  go 
out  upon  the  hills  and  bring  back  bunches  to  sell 
along  the  streets  and  from  house  to  house.  Their 
splendid  color  need  not  be  praised.  It  is  known 
to  all  Eastern  people,  who  grow  the  plants  in  gar- 
dens (I  seem  to  remember  when  they  came  in) 
under  the  name  of  Esclischoltzia.  And  here,  on 
the  mountain  walls  of  this  Arizona  desert,  are 

1  I  visited  more  than  one  of  them  afterward. 


250  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

hanging-gardens  so  full  of  them  as  to  form  masses 
of  color  visible  ten  or  fifteen  miles  away  !  "  They 
shall  blossom  abundantly,"  said  the  prophet; 
and  who  knows  but  he  spoke  of  the  Tucson 
Mountains  in  poppy  time  ? 


NESTS  AND   OTHER  MATTERS 

WITH  the  first  of  April  approaching,  the  life  of 
Arizona  birds  takes  on  a  busier  complexion.  The 
idle  season  is  over ;  now  there  are  nests  to  be 
built  (no  small  undertaking,  in  itself,  as  a  man 
may  easily  find  out  by  setting  himself  to  build 
one),  and  a  family  to  be  watched  over  and  de- 
fended. Now  the  human  visitor  begins  to  under- 
stand what  cactuses  were  made  for.  As  he  walks 
among  the  whitish-green  chollas,  giving  them 
elbow-room,  he  has  only  to  glance  to  right  and 
left  to  see  what  a  considerable  proportion  of  them 
are  inhabited ;  this  one  by  a  pair  of  thrashers, 
the  other  by  a  pair  of  cactus  wrens.  In  neither 
case  is  there  any  serious  attempt  at  concealment ; 
partly  because  the  attempt  would  be  useless ; 
partly,  we  may  guess,  because  concealment  is 
unnecessary.  If  your  safe  is  burglar  proof,  why 
be  at  the  trouble  to  hide  it?  Neither  squirrel 
nor  snake  is  likely  to  climb  a  cholla  cactus,  and 
even  a  man  knows  enough  to  approach  it  with 
caution. 

Of  the  two  species  of  thrasher  that  live  in  the 
desert  the  larger  one,  known  as  Palmer's,  seems 


252  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

to  be  the  earlier  breeder.  I  found  a  nest  with 
eggs  on  the  first  day  of  March  ;  and  on  the  ninth, 
I  came  upon  a  brood  of  young  birds  already  out 
of  the  nest.  They  were  still  new  to  the  world, 
acting  as  if  they  found  it  a  strange,  unintelligible 
place  ;  but  they  were  fully  fledged,  and  when  put 
to  it,  flew  from  one  cholla  to  another  without  dif- 
ficulty. Still,  they  had  more  faith  in  cactus 
thorns  than  in  wing-power,  and  allowed  me  al- 
most to  lay  hands  on  them  before  taking  flight. 

The  two  desert-inhabiting  thrashers,  by  the  by, 
Palmer's  and  Bendire's,  are  so  much  alike  (the 
Palmer  being  somewhat  longer  and  darker  than 
its  neighbor),  that  it  was  some  time  before  I  felt 
sure  of  myself  in  discriminating  between  them. 
As  to  the  question  of  comparative  length  (one  of 
the  most  uncertain  points  on  which  an  observer 
can  base  a  determination),  I  fell  back  upon  an 
old  method,  which  it  seems  worth  while  to  men- 
tion here,  because  I  have  never  seen  it  referred 
to  in  print.  It  has  served  one  man  well,  and  may 
do  as  much  for  another. 

Two  of  our  Eastern  birds  that  are  most  trouble- 
some to  beginners  in  ornithology  are  the  downy 
and  the  hairy  woodpecker,  the  only  difference 
between  them  —  the  only  one  that  can  ordinarily 
be  seen  in  the  field,  I  mean  to  say  —  being  one 
of  size.  Well,  I  long  ago  discovered  for  myself 


NESTS  AND  OTHER  MATTERS          253 

that  it  was  much  easier  to  carry  in  my  eye  the 
comparative  measurements  of  the  two  birds'  bills 
than  the  comparative  measurements  of  the  birds 
themselves.  Let  me  see  the  head  in  profile,  and 
I  could  name  its  owner  almost  beyond  mistake. 

This  method,  as  I  say,  I  resorted  to  in  the  case 
of  my  two  desert  thrashers,  and  little  by  little 
(time  itself  being  of  great  service  in  such  mat- 
ters), I  settled  the  question  with  myself.  And 
still  there  remained  a  certain  fact  that  cast  a 
shade  of  doubt  over  my  determination.  In  Mrs. 
Bailey's  Handbook,  the  only  authority  I  had 
brought  with  me,  Mr.  Herbert  Brown,  after 
twenty  years'  experience  with  Tucson  birds,  is 
quoted  as  saying  that  the  Bendire  thrasher  al- 
most never  sings,  whereas  the  birds  that  I  was 
calling  by  that  name  were  m  song  continually. 
What  was  I  to  think?  It  seemed  a  case  for  a 
gun.  Without  it,  how  could  I  ever  be  sure  of 
my  reckoning  ?  I  was  in  a  box,  as  we  say.  But 
there  was  a  way  out.  There  almost  always  is. 
The  two  species  lay  eggs  of  different  colors.  I 
must  find  them ;  and  with  patience  I  did ;  first, 
the  blue-green  eggs  of  Palmer,  and  then  (two 
sets  in  one  day),  the  whitish  eggs  of  Bendire ; 
and  my  identification  of  the  owners,  made  before 
the  eggs  were  examined,  turned  out  to  be  correct 
in  all  cases. 


254  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

In  the  way  of  music,  neither  bird  is  equal  to 
the  brown  thrasher  of  the  East.  In  fact,  if  I  am 
to  be  judge,  one  Massachusetts  thrasher,  in  his 
cinnamon-colored  suit  (and  in  the  top  of  a  gray 
birch),  could  outsing  any  half-dozen  of  the  birds 
in  this  Arizona  desert.  It  is  to  be  said,  however, 
that  there  is  a  third  species  here  (not  on  the  face 
of  the  desert  itself,  but  in  the  thickets  along  the 
Eillito  River),  the  crissal  thrasher  so  called, 
whose  song  I  have  yet  to  make  sure  of.  He  is 
larger  even  than  the  Palmer,  and  to  look  at  him 
should  have  a  fuller  voice. 

And  this  reminds  me  that  I  had  been  in  Tuc- 
son more  than  a  month  before  I  saw  a  mocking- 
bird ;  and  even  now,  when  I  have  been  here 
almost  two  months,  I  have  seen  but  three.  The 
people  generally  seem  to  mistake  the  thrashers 
for  mockers.  If  I  speak  to  them  about  the 
strangeness  of  the  mocker's  absence,  they  declare 
that  mockers  are  common  here.  At  least  two 
persons  have  turned  upon  me  with  the  assertion, 
"  Why,  there 's  one  singing  out  there  at  this 
minute."  And  they  point  to  a  thrasher,  a  bird 
that  wears  not  one  of  the  mocker's  three  colors, 
—  gray,  black,  and  white,  —  and  for  music  is  as 
much  like  him  as  a  child's  tin  whistle  is  like  a 
master's  flute.  And  still  it  is  true,  at  least  the 
systematists  tell  us  so,  and  I  have  no  thought  of 


NESTS  AND  OTHER  MATTERS          255 

questioning  it,  that  the  mockingbird  is  only  a 
nobler  kind  of  thrasher.  And  thrashers,  the 
mocker  included,  are  only  larger  kinds  of  wrens. 

Arizona  is  the  wrens'  country.  During  my 
short  stay  in  Tucson  I  have  seen  ten  species  :  the 
sage  thrasher,  the  Western  mockingbird,  the 
Bendire  thrasher,  the  Palmer  thrasher,  the  cris- 
sal  thrasher,  the  cactus  wren,  the  rock  wren,  the 
canyon  wren,  the  Baird  wren,  and  the  interior 
tule  wren. 

The  sage  thrashers,  whose  mysterious  silence 
was  commented  upon  in  a  previous  article,  are 
only  now  beginning  to  find  their  voices  ;  for  they 
are  still  (March  21)  in  the  desert,  though  they 
will  go  elsewhere  to  breed.  Two  days  ago,  while 
returning  from  the  Killito  Valley,  I  came  upon 
a  group  of  them,  and  to  my  great  pleasure  two 
or  three  were  in  song ;  not  letting  themselves 
out,  to  be  sure,  but  running  over  a  medley  of 
a  tune  under  their  breath  in  a  kind  of  dumb 
rehearsal.  I  could  barely  hear  it,  but  I  saw  at 
once  why  the  birds,  for  all  their  short  bills  and 
unthrasher-like  ways,  are  called  sometimes  sage 
thrashers  and  sometimes  mountain  mockingbirds. 
I  hope  their  sotto  voce  preludings  will  not  out- 
last my  stay  among  them. 

One  of  my  particular  favorites  here  is  the  Say 
phcebe.  From  the  first  he  took  my  fancy.  All 


256  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

his  ways  please  me.  As  the  homely  phrase  is,  I 
like  the  cut  of  his  jib.  His  plaintive  call  is  never 
wearisome,  though  he  is  exceedingly  free  with  it. 
And  I  have  grown  to  like  him  and  his  mate  the 
better  because  they  are  fond  of  certain  places 
where  I  myself  am  given  to  spending  now  and 
then  an  idle  hour.  There  are  four  abandoned 
shanties  in  different  parts  of  the  desert,  in  the 
shade  of  which  I  often  rest ;  and  every  one  of 
them  has  its  pair  of  Say  phoebes.  I  saw  the 
birds  with  building  materials  in  their  bills,  and 
began  by  expecting  to  find  the  nest  inside  the 
open  building ;  but  by  and  by  I  discovered  that 
they  liked  best  of  all  a  site  down  in  a  well !  It 
seems  a  safe  position  to  begin  with  —  as  long  as 
the  nest  contains  nothing  but  eggs ;  but  I  ask 
myself  about  the  danger  to  the  little  ones  when 
they  become  big  enough  to  be  uneasy.  If  they 
are  anything  like  young  robins,  for  example,  a 
pitiful  share  of  them  must  perish  sixty  feet 
underground.  However,  the  birds  may  be  pre- 
sumed to  understand  their  own  business  better 
than  any  outsider  can  teach  it  to  them;  and 
they  unquestionably  prefer  the  well.  Of  the 
four  pairs  just  mentioned,  three  have  built  in 
that  position  (the  wells,  it  should  be  understood, 
are  not  stoned),  and  the  fourth  would  have  done 
likewise,  I  dare  say,  only  that  the  well  in  their 


NESTS  AND  OTHER  MATTERS          257 

case  happens  to  be  covered.  As  it  is,  the  nest  is 
on  one  of  the  joists  of  a  shed,  and  an  imperti- 
nent stranger  has  been  known  to  clamber  up  and 
examine  the  eggs.  "  Oh,  if  that  well  had  only 
been  left  open !  "  the  birds  probably  thought,  as 
they  saw  what  he  was  doing. 

One  kind  of  nest  that  is  common  here  is  set 
so  out  in  sight  that  none  but  a  blind  man  could 
miss  it,  though  from  its  color  it  might  readily  be 
passed  as  an  old  one,  not  worth  investigation.  I 
do  not  remember  just  how  many  I  have  seen,  — 
half  a  dozen,  it  may  be,  —  but  I  have  never 
looked  into  one.  They  cannot  be  looked  into, 
unless  they  are  first  torn  to  pieces. 

I  speak  of  the  verdin's  nest.  It  is  a  marvel 
of  workmanship :  globular,  or  roughly  so,  with 
an  entrance  neatly  roofed  over  well  down  on  one 
side ;  constructed  outwardly  —  I  cannot  speak 
beyond  that,  of  course  —  of  countless  small 
thorny  sticks,  and  in  size  and  general  color  re- 
sembling a  large  paper-wasps'  nest.  The  bird, 
as  I  say,  plants  it  in  full  sight,  in  a  leafless  cat's- 
claw  bush,  by  preference,  though  I  have  seen 
one  beauty  in  a  palo-verde  tree. 

My  first  one  I  was  directed  to  by  the  outcries 
of  the  owner.  The  f oolish  thing  —  if  she  was 
foolish  —  actually  went  inside,  and  while  there 
scolded  me.  She  took  it  for  granted,  I  suppose, 


258  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

that  I  had  seen  her  go  in,  and  was  determined 
to  let  me  know  what  she  thought  of  such  despic- 
able espionage.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  was  busy 
just  then  with  a  rarer  bird,  and  might  have 
passed  her  pretty  house  unnoticed  had  she  held 
her  peace.  But  the  verdin  is  a  nervously  loqua- 
cious body,  and  perhaps  would  rather  talk  than 
keep  a  secret.  Such  cases  have  been  heard  of. 
Whatever  else  we  may  say  of  her,  she  is  an  archi- 
tect of  something  like  genius. 


A  FLYCATCHER  AND  A  SPARROW 

I  BELIEVE  I  have  seen  two  of  the  oddest  birds  in 
Texas  —  the  road-runner  and  the  scissor-tailed 
flycatcher.  The  first  was  mentioned  some  time 
ago  in  these  letters ;  the  second  I  have  but  lately 
met  with.  When  I  was  in  San  Antonio  in  Jan- 
uary, he  was  absent  for  the  winter.  He  would 
return,  I  was  informed,  shortly  after  the  middle 
of  March,  and  I  have  kept  it  fast  in  mind  that  I 
must  stop  here  on  my  way  home  and  make  his 
acquaintance. 

I  knew  he  was  odd,  but  he  has  turned  out  to  be 
odder  even  than  I  supposed.  Other  places,  other 
birds,  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  surely  this  one, 
to  use  Emerson's  word,  is  the  "  otherest."  When 
I  saw  him  first,  in  San  Pedro  Park  (everything 
is  saintly  in  the  Southwest),  I  thought  for  an 
instant  that  I  was  looking  at  a  bird  which  had 
seized  a  long  string,  or  a  strip  of  cloth,  and  was 
flying  away  with  it  to  his  nest.  Seen  more  fully, 
he  looked,  I  said  to  myself,  like  a  Japanese  kite, 
or  some  other  outlandish  plaything.  Even  now, 
when  he  has  been  in  sight  pretty  constantly 
for  five  or  six  days,  I  can  hardly  say  that  he 


260  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

looks  like  a  bird  to  me.  His  enormously  long  tail 
feathers  are  so  fantastic,  so  almost  grotesque ! 
They  render  him  a  kind  of  monstrosity.  One 
feels  as  if  he  had  been  made,  not  born ;  and  some 
Oriental  must  have  been  the  maker. 

Yet  if  ever  a  bird  was  alive,  he  is.  His  spirits 
are  effervescent  and  apparently  inexhaustible. 
Few  birds  are  noisier  or  more  continually  on  the 
move.  When  six  or  eight  scissor-tails  meet  for 
consultation  in  one  small  tree,  even  though  it  be 
in  a  cemetery,  there  are  "  great  doings,"  as  the 
country  phrase  is.  What  the  disturbance  is  all 
about,  it  is  beyond  me  to  tell,  but  it  seems  a  rea- 
sonable assumption  that  it  has  to  do  somehow 
with  questions  of  love  and  marriage.  So  far  as  I 
have  noticed,  such  sessions  do  not  last  long.  In 
the  nature  of  things  they  cannot.  The  hubbub  in- 
creases, the  discussion,  whatever  its  subject,  waxes 
more  and  more  animated,  and  then,  of  a  sudden, 
the  assembly  breaks  up  (I  was  going  to  say  ex- 
plodes), and  away  fly  the  birds  (and  the  birds' 
tails),  every  one  still  contending  for  the  last 
word. 

But  there  is  no  need  of  six  or  eight  to  set  the 
pot  bubbling.  Two  are  a  plenty ;  and  indeed  I 
suspect  that  a  single  bird  would  have  it  out  with 
himself  rather  than  forego  for  an  hour  or  two 
the  excitement  of  a  shindy.  In  temperament  the 


A  FLYCATCHER  AND  A  SPARROW     261 

scissor-tail,  as  well  as  I  can  determine,  is  own 
brother  to  the  kingbird.  As  I  said,  he  is  brim- 
ming over  with  spirits.  If  he  gave  them  no  vent 
he  would  burst. 

So  after  a  few  minutes  of  quietness,  the  calm 
that  precedes  the  storm,  he  darts  into  the  air, 
with  vehement,  mad  gyrations,  opening  and  shut- 
ting his  tail  feathers  spasmodically,  and  uttering 
loud  cries  of  one  sort  and  another.  Perhaps  he 
flies  straight  upward,  or  as  nearly  so  as  possible 
(this  is  one  of  the  kingbird's  tricks),  and  with 
tail  outspread  comes  down  headfirst  like  an  arrow. 
He  is  like  a  creature  full  of  wine,  or  like  one  be- 
side himself.  What  he  does,  he  has  to  do.  There 
is  no  holding  him  in. 

Sometimes,  when  there  are  two  in  the  air  to- 
gether, and  for  anything  I  know  at  other  times, 
—  I  tell  what  I  have  seen,  —  they  utter  most 
curious,  hollow,  throbbing,  booming  noises,  such 
as  one  would  never  attribute  to  any  bird  of  the 
flycatcher  family.  They  utter  them,  I  say,  but  I 
mean  only  that  they  make  them.  How  they  do  it, 
whether  with  the  throat,  the  wings,  or  the  tail,  is 
something  I  have  yet  to  discover.  The  only  book 
I  have  at  hand  makes  no  mention  of  such  noises, 
and  I  was  greatly  taken  aback  when  I  heard 
them. 

As  the  reader  perceives,  I  am  dealing  in  first 


262  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

impressions.  They  are  all  I  have.  Most  of  the 
scissor-tail's  tricks  and  manners,  indeed,  I  have 
yet  to  witness.  I  have  not  seen  him  chase  a  crow, 
for  instance,  or  a  raven  (he  would  have  to  travel 
a  hundred  miles,  I  suspect,  to  find  either  the  one 
or  the  other),  but  give  him  half  a  chance,  and  I 
am  sure  he  would  do  it.  One  thing  I  have  seen 
him  do :  I  have  seen  him  fly  before  an  English 
sparrow.  The  action  seemed  unworthy  of  him, 
but  I  dare  say  he  did  not  so  regard  it.  Perhaps 
it  was  all  a  joke.  But  apparently  no  bird  con- 
siders it  a  disgrace  to  be  put  to  rout  by  a  smaller 
one.  The  shameful  thing  is  to  be  afraid  of  one 
that  is  larger  than  yourself.  This  is  not  the 
human  way  of  looking  at  such  matters;  but 
perhaps  that  does  not  prove  it  a  false  way.  I 
seem  to  see  that  much  might  be  said  in  defense 
of  it. 

It  is  surprising  how  common  the  scissor-tail  is, 
and  more  surprising  yet  that  nobody  seems  to 
notice  him.  I  should  have  thought  that  all  the 
passers-by  would  be  stopping  to  stare  at  so  half- 
absurd  a  prodigy.  But  when  he  performs  his 
craziest  evolutions  here  in  the  Alamo  Plaza,  in  the 
very  heart  of  the  city,  nobody  appears  to  mind 
him.  The  truth  is  that  to  these  people  —  to  most 
of  them,  at  least  —  he  is  an  old  story,  while  to 
me  he  is  like  a  bird  invented  last  week.  Wher- 


A  FLYCATCHER  AND  A  SPARROW     263 

ever  you  notice  men,  you  will  perceive  that  it  is 
not  the  wonderful  that  attracts  their  attention, 
but  the  novel  and  the  out-of-the-way.  The  moon 
and  the  stars  they  are  used  to,  and  quite  properly 
look  upon  with  indifference  ;  but  let  a  neighbor's 
hencoop  catch  fire,  and  they  cannot  run  fast 
enough  to  behold  the  spectacle. 

Another  and  better  thing  I  have  accomplished 
during  my  present  brief  stay  in  San  Antonio : 
I  have  heard  and  seen  the  Cassin  sparrow.  A 
Washington  ornithologist,  familiar  with  this 
Southwestern  country,  learning  that  I  was  on  my 
way  thither,  wrote  to  me  in  January :  "  On  no 
account  return  without  hearing  the  Cassin  spar- 
row." To  confess  the  truth,  I  had  almost  for- 
gotten the  injunction,  emphatic  as  it  was  ;  but  a 
few  mornings  ago,  on  my  way  back  to  the  termi- 
nus of  the  street-car  line  after  a  jaunt  into  some 
old  pecan  woods,  five  or  six  miles  out  of  the  city, 
I  stopped  short  at  the  sound  of  a  few  simple  bird 
notes.  What  a  gracious  tune!  And  as  novel 
as  it  was  gracious  !  I  had  never  heard  the  like  : 
a  long  trill  or  shake,  pitched  at  the  top  of  the 
scale,  and  then,  after  a  rest,  a  phrase  of  five 
notes  in  the  sweetest  of  sparrow  voices,  ending 
with  the  truest  and  most  unexpected  of  musical 
intervals.  For  mnemonic  purposes,  as  my  custom 
is  (useful  to  me,  if  to  no  one  else),  I  at  once  put 


264  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

words  to  the  tune :  "  She "  (this  for  the  long 
trill),  "  pretty,  pretty  she." 

The  birds  were  in  some  scattered  mesquite 
bushes  (very  bright  now,  in  their  new  yellow- 
green  leafage),  and  I  hastened  to  get  through  the 
fence  and  make  up  to  them.  They  proved  to  be 
very  small,  and  distressingly  deficient  in  marks 
or  "  characters,"  but  I  took  such  note  of  them  as 
I  could,  in  a  poor  light.  The  main  thing,  for  the 
time  being,  was  the  song.  That  prolonged  open- 
ing note,  with  its  sound  of  an  indrawn  whistle, 
ought  to  be  the  work  of  a  Puccea,  I  told  myself, 
remembering  the  Florida  representative  of  that 
genus,  and  the  singers  should  therefore  be  Cas- 
sin  sparrows. 

The  next  morning,  having  refreshed  my  mem- 
ory by  a  reading  of  the  handbook,  I  took  the  car 
immediately  after  breakfast  for  another  visit  to 
the  place.  This,  I  should  have  said,  was  in  the 
rear  grounds  of  an  asylum  for  the  insane.  It  was 
Sunday  morning,  and  as  I  crawled  through  the 
fence  and  took  up  my  position  among  the  mes- 
quites,  I  presently  found  myself  under  fire  from 
the  windows  and  balconies.  The  distance  was  too 
great  for  me  to  understand  what  was  said,  but 
there  was  no  doubt  that  the  inmates  of  the  insti- 
tution regarded  me  as  a  queer  one.  However,  I 
believed  in  my  own  sanity  (as  things  go  in  this 


A  FLYCATCHER   AND  A  SPARROW     265 

world),  and  did  not  propose  to  be  hindered.  The 
birds  were  there,  and  that  was  enough. 

And  now,  to  my  intense  satisfaction,  I  found 
that  they  were  doing  just  what  the  handbook  de- 
scribed :  springing  into  the  air  for  a  few  feet, 
after  the  manner  of  long-billed  marsh  wrens,  and 
with  fluttering  wings  dropping  slowly  back  to  the 
perch,  uttering  their  sweet,  "  She,  pretty,  pretty 
she,"  as  they  descended.  I  secured  somewhat 
fuller  observations  of  their  plumage,  also,  and  be- 
came morally  certain  —  which  means  something 
less  than  scientifically  certain,  though  really, 
taking  Mr.  Attwater's  list  of  the  birds  of  San 
Antonio  as  a  guide,  there  is  nothing  else  they 
can  be  —  that  the  singers  were  Cassin  sparrows.1 

And  glad  I  am  to  have  heard  them.  I  cannot 
speak  for  others  ;  judgment  in  such  matters  must 
always  be  largely  a  question  of  personal  taste ; 
but  for  myself  I  have  heard  few  bird  songs  that 
satisfy  me  so  well ;  so  quaint  and  original,  yet  so 
true  and  simple.  San  Antonio  mockingbirds  are 
numberless,  and  their  performances  are  wonder- 
ful ;  I  think  I  should  never  tire  of  them ;  but 
somehow  those  six  quiet  notes  of  the  sparrow 
seem  to  go  deeper  home. 

1  And  so  they  were,  on  the  testimony  of  the  Washington 
ornithologist  above  quoted,  who  knows  both  bird  and  song. 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS 

ALMOST  or  quite  the  most  brilliant  bird  that  I 
saw  in  Arizona  was  the  vermilion  flycatcher.  I 
had  heard  of  it  as  sometimes  appearing  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Tucson,  but  entertained  small 
hope  of  meeting  it  there  myself.  A  stranger, 
straitened  for  time,  and  that  time  in  winter, 
blundering  about  by  himself,  with  no  pilot  to 
show  him  the  likely  places,  could  hardly  expect 
to  find  many  besides  the  commoner  things.  So 
I  reasoned  with  myself,  aiming  to  be  philosophi- 
cal. Nevertheless,  there  is  always  the  chance  of 
green  hand's  luck ;  I  knew  it  by  more  than  one 
happy  experience ;  and  who  could  tell  what 
might  happen  ?  Possibly  it  was  not  for  nothing 
that  my  eye,  as  by  a  kind  of  magnetic  attraction, 
fell  so  often  upon  Mrs.  Bailey's  opening  sentence 
about  this  particular  bird  as  day  after  day,  on 
one  hunt  and  another,  I  turned  the  leaves  of  her 
Handbook.  "  Of  all  the  rare  Mexican  birds  seen 
in  southern  Arizona  and  Texas,"  so  I  read,  "  the 
vermilion  flycatcher  is  the  gem." 

One  thing  was  certain :  this  famous  Mexican 
rarity  was  not  confusingly  like  anything  else, 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS          267 

as  so  many  of  its  Northern  relatives  have  the 
unhandsome  trick  of  being.  If  I  saw  it,  ever  so 
hurriedly,  I  should  recognize  it. 

Well,  I  did  see  it,  and  almost  of  course  at  a 
moment  when  I  was  least  looking  for  it.  This 
was  on  the  5th  of  February,  my  fifth  day  in 
Tucson.  I  had  crossed  the  Santa  Cruz  Valley, 
west  of  the  city,  by  one  road,  and  after  a  stroll 
among  the  foothills  opposite,  was  returning  by 
another,  when  a  bit  of  flashing  red  started  up 
from  the  wire  fence  directly  before  me.  I  knew 
what  it  was,  almost  before  I  saw  it,  as  it  seemed, 
so  eager  was  I,  and  so  well  prepared ;  and  as  the 
solitary's  companionable  habit  is,  I  spoke  aloud. 
"  There  's  the  vermilion  flycatcher  !  "  I  heard 
myself  saying. 

The  fellow  was  every  whit  as  splendid  as  my 
fancy  had  painted  him,  and  to  my  joy  he  seemed 
to  be  not  in  the  least  put  out  by  my  approach  nor 
chary  of  displaying  himself.  He  was  too  innocent 
and  too  busy ;  darting  into  the  air  to  snatch  a 
passing  insect,  and  anon  returning  to  his  perch, 
which  was  now  a  fence-post,  now  the  wire,  and 
now,  best  of  all,  the  topmost,  tilting  spray  of  a 
dwarf  mesquite.  Thus  engaged,  every  motion  a 
delight  to  the  eye,  he  flitted  along  the  road  in 
advance  of  me,  till  finally,  having  reached  the 
limit  of  his  hunting-ground,  —  the  roadside 


268  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

ditches  filled  with  water  from  the  overflow  of  irri- 
gated barley  fields,  —  he  turned  back  by  the  way 
he  had  come. 

I  went  home  a  happy  man ;  I  had  added  one 
of  the  choicest  and  most  beautiful  of  American 
birds  to  my  mental  collection.  One  thing  was 
still  lacking,  however :  flycatchers  are  not  song- 
birds, but  the  humblest  of  them  has  a  voice,  and 
having  things  to  say  is  apt  to  say  them;  my 
new  acquaintance  had  kept  his  thoughts  to  him- 
self. 

This  was  in  the  forenoon,  and  after  luncheon 
I  went  back  to  walk  again  over  that  muddy  road 
between  those  ditches  of  muddy  water.  The  bird 
might  still  be  there.  And  he  was,  —  still  catch- 
ing insects,  and  still  silent.  But  so  handsome ! 
At  first  sight  most  people,  I  suppose,  would  com- 
pare him,  as  I  did,  with  the  scarlet  tanager.  The 
red  parts  are  of  nearly  or  quite  the  same  shade, 
—  a  little  deeper  and  richer,  if  anything,  — 
while  the  wings,  tail,  and  back  are  dark  brown, 
approaching  black, — the  wings  and  tail  espe- 
cially, —  dark  enough,  at  any  rate,  to  afford  a 
brilliant  contrast.  His  scientific  name  is  Pyro- 
cephalus,  which  is  admirable  as  far  as  it  goes, 
but  falls  a  long  way  short  of  telling  the  whole 
truth  about  him  ;  for  not  only  is  his  head  of  a 
fiery  hue,  but  his  whole  body  as  well,  with  the 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS          269 

exceptions  already  noted.  In  size  he  ranks  be- 
tween the  least  flycatcher  and  the  wood  pewee. 
In  liveliness  of  action  he  is  equal  to  the  spryest 
of  his  family,  with  a  flirt  of  the  tail  which  to  my 
eye  is  identical  with  that  of  the  phoebe.  His  gor- 
geous color  is  the  more  effective  because  of  his 
aerial  habits.  The  taiiager  is  bright  sitting  on 
the  bough,  but  how  much  brighter  he  would  look 
if  every  few  minutes  he  were  seen  hovering  in 
mid-air  with  the  sunlight  playing  upon  him ! 

Certainly  I  was  in  great  luck,  and  I  felt  it  the 
more  as  day  after  day  I  found  the  dashing  beauty 
in  the  same  place.  I  could  not  spend  my  whole 
winter  vacation  in  visiting  him,  but  I  saw  him 
there  at  odd  times,  —  nearly  as  often  as  I  passed, 
—  until  February  17.  Then  he  disappeared ;  but 
a  week  later  I  discovered  him,  or  another  like 
him,  in  a  different  part  of  the  valley,  and  on  the 
26th  I  saw  two.  The  next  day,  for  the  first  time, 
one  of  the  birds  was  in  voice,  uttering  a  few  fine, 
short  notes,  little  remarkable  in  themselves,  but 
thoroughly  characteristic ;  not  suggestive  of  any 
other  flycatcher  notes  known  to  me ;  so  that, 
from  that  time  to  the  end  of  my  stay  in  Tucson, 
I  was  never  in  doubt  as  to  their  authorship,  no 
matter  where  I  heard  them. 

All  these  earlier  birds  were  males  in  full 
plumage.  The  first  female  —  herself  a  beauty, 


270  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

with  a  modest  tinge  of  red  upon  her  lower  parts, 
enough  to  mark  the  relationship  —  was  noticed 
March  5.  Males  were  now  becoming  common, 
and  on  the  9th,  although  my  walks  covered  no 
very  wide  territory,  I  counted,  of  males  and  fe- 
males together,  seventeen.  From  first  to  last  not 
one  was  met  with  on  the  creosote  and  cactus- 
covered  desert,  but  after  the  first  few  days  of 
March  they  were  well  distributed  over  the  Santa 
Cruz  and  Rillito  valleys  and  about  the  grounds 
of  the  university.  I  found  no  nest  until  March 
27,  although  at  least  two  weeks  earlier  than  that 
a  female  was  seen  pulling  shreds  of  dry  bark  from 
a  cottonwood  limb,  while  her  mate  flitted  about 
the  neighborhood,  now  here,  now  there,  as  if  he 
were  too  happy  to  contain  himself. 

The  prettiest  performance  of  the  male,  wit- 
nessed almost  daily,  and  sometimes  many  times  a 
day,  after  the  arrival  of  the  other  sex,  was  a  sur- 
prisingly protracted  ecstatic  flight,  half  flying, 
half  hovering,  the  wings  being  held  unnaturally 
high  above  the  back,  as  if  on  purpose  to  display 
the  red  body  (a  most  peculiar  action,  by  which 
the  bird  could  be  told  as  far  as  he  could  be  seen), 
accompanied  throughout  by  a  rapid  repetition  of 
his  simple  call ;  all  thoroughly  in  the  flycatcher 
manner ;  exactly  such  a  mad,  lyrical  outburst  as 
one  frequently  sees  indulged  in  by  the  chebec,  for 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS          271 

instance,  and  the  different  species  of  phcebe.  In 
endurance,  as  well  as  in  passion,  Pyrocephalus  is 
not  behind  the  best  of  them,  while  his  exceptional 
bravery  of  color  gives  him  at  such  moments  a 
glory  altogether  his  own.  Sometimes,  indeed,  he 
seems  to  be  emulous  of  the  skylark  himself,  he 
rises  to  such  a  height,  beating  his  way  upward, 
hovering  for  breath,  and  then  pushing  higher  and 
still  higher.  Once  I  saw  him  and  the  large  Ari- 
zona crested  flycatcher  in  the  air  side  by  side, 
one  as  crazy  as  the  other ;  but  the  big  magister 
was  an  awkward  hand  at  the  business,  compared 
with  the  tiny  Pyrocephalus. 

It  was  good  to  find  so  showy  a  bird  so  little 
disposed  to  shyness.  At  Old  Camp  Lowell,  where 
I  often  rested  for  an  hour  at  noon  in  the  shade 
of  one  of  the  adobe  buildings,  the  bachelor  winter 
occupants  of  which  were  kind  enough  to  give  me 
food  and  shelter  (together  with  pleasant  com- 
pany) whenever  my  walk  took  me  so  far  from 
home,  our  siesta  was  constantly  enlivened  by  his 
bright  presence  and  engaging  tricks.  One  day, 
as  he  perched  at  the  top  of  a  low  mesquite,  on  a 
level  with  our  eyes,  I  put  my  glass  into  the  hand 
of  the  younger  of  my  hosts.  He  broke  out  in  a 
tone  of  wonder.  "  Well,  now,"  said  he  (he  spoke 
to  the  bird),  "you  are  a  peach."  And  so  he  is. 
It  is  exactly  what,  in  my  more  old-fashioned  and 


272  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

less  collegiate  English,  I  have  been  vainly  en- 
deavoring to  say. 

And  to  be  a  "  peach  "  is  a  fine  thing.  A  viva- 
cious living  essayist,  it  is  true,  who  is  probably 
a  handsome  man  himself,  at  least  in  the  looking- 
glass,  declares  that  "  male  ugliness  is  an  endear- 
ing quality."  The  remark  may  be  true  —  in  a 
sense ;  by  all  means  let  us  hope  so,  seeing  how 
lavish  Nature  has  been  with  the  commodity  in 
question ;  but  I  am  confident  that  the  female 
vermilion  flycatcher  would  never  admit  it.  As 
for  her  glorious  dandy  of  a  husband,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  what  opinion  he  would  hold  of  such 
an  impudent  reflection  upon  feminine  perspica- 
city and  taste.  "  A  plague  upon  paradoxes  and 
aphorisms,"  I  hear  him  answer.  "  If  fine  feathers 
don't  make  fine  birds,  what  in  Heaven's  name 
do  they  make  ?  " 

It  was  only  two  days  after  my  discovery  of  the 
vermilion  flycatcher  (if  I  remember  correctly  I 
was  at  that  moment  on  my  way  to  enjoy  a  third 
or  fourth  look  at  him)  that  I  first  saw  a  very 
different  but  scarcely  less  interesting  novelty.  I 
was  on  the  sidewalk  of  Main  Street,  in  the  busy 
part  of  the  day,  my  thoughts  running  upon  a 
batch  of  delayed  letters  just  received,  when  sud- 
denly I  looked  up  (probably  I  had  heard  a  voice 
without  being  conscious  of  it,  for  the  confirmed 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS          273 

hobby-rider  is  sometimes  in  the  saddle  unwit- 
tingly) and  caught  sight  of  a  few  swifts  far  over- 
head. People  were  passing,  but  it  was  now  or 
never  with  me,  and  I  whipped  out  my  opera-glass. 
There  were  six  of  the  birds,  and  their  throats  were 
white.  So  much  I  saw,  having  known  what  to 
look  for,  and  then  they  were  gone,  —  as  if  the 
heavens  had  opened  and  swallowed  them  up.  It 
was  a  niggardly  interview,  at  pretty  long  range, 
but  a  deal  better  than  nothing ;  enough,  at  all 
events,  for  an  identification.  They  were  white- 
throated  swifts,  —  Aeronautes  melanoleucus. 

Three  days  later  a  flock  of  at  least  seventeen 
birds  of  the  same  species  were  hawking  over  the 
Santa  Cruz  Valley,  and  now,  as  they  swept  this 
way  and  that  at  their  feeding,  there  was  leisure 
for  the  field-glass  and  something  like  a  real  ex- 
amination. To  my  surprise  (surprise  is  the  com- 
pensation of  ignorance)  I  discovered  that  they 
had  not  only  white  throats,  as  their  name  implies, 
but  white  breasts,  and  more  noticeable  still,  white 
rumps.  Those  who  are  familiar  with  our  common 
dingy,  soot-colored  chimney  swift  of  the  East  will 
be  able  to  form  some  idea  of  the  distinguished 
appearance  of  this  Westerner:  a  considerably 
larger  bird,  built  on  the  same  rakish  lines,  shoot- 
ing about  the  sky  in  the  same  lightning-like  zig- 
zags, and  marked  in  this  striking  and  original 


274  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

manner  with  white.  I  saw  the  birds  only  four 
times  afterward,  the  last  time  on  the  17th  of  Feb- 
ruary. So  I  say,  speaking  after  the  manner  of 
men  ;  but  in  truth  I  can  see  them  now,  their  white 
rumps  lighting  up  as  they  wheel  and  catch  the 
sun.  It  pleases  me  to  learn  that  it  is  next  to 
impossible  to  shoot  them,  and  that  they  are  scarce 
in  collections.  So  may  they  continue.  They  were 
made  for  better  things. 

The  most  beautiful  bird  that  I  found  in  Ari- 
zona, though  judgments  of  this  kind  are  of  neces- 
sity liable  to  revision  as  one's  mood  changes, 
was  the  Arizona  Pyrrhuloxia.  I  should  be  glad 
to  give  the  reader,  as  well  as  to  have  for  my  own 
use,  an  English  name  for  it,  but  so  far  as  I  am 
aware  it  has  none.  It  has  lived  beyond  the  range 
of  the  vernacular.  My  delight  in  its  beauty  was 
less  keen  than  naturally  it  would  have  been,  be- 
cause I  had  spent  my  first  raptures  upon  its 
equally  handsome  Texas  relative  of  the  same 
name  a  few  weeks  before.  This  was  at  San  An- 
tonio, in  the  chaparral  just  outside  the  city.  I 
had  been  listening  to  a  flock  of  lark  sparrows, 
I  remember,  and  looking  at  sundry  things,  where 
almost  everything  was  new,  when  all  at  once  I 
saw  before  me  at  the  foot  of  a  bush  the  loveliest 
bunch  of  feathers  that  I  had  ever  set  eyes  on. 
Without  the  least  thought  of  what  I  was  doing 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  275 

I  began  repeating  to  myself  under  my  breath, 
"  O  my  soul !  O  my  soul !  "  And  in  sober  truth 
the  creature  was  deserving  of  all  the  admiration 
it  excited :  a  bird  of  the  cardinal's  size  and  build, 
dressed  not  in  gaudy  red,  but  in  the  most  exqui- 
site shade  of  gray,  with  a  plentiful  spilling  of 
an  equally  exquisite  rose  color  over  its  under 
parts.  Its  bright  orange  bill  was  surrounded  at 
the  base  by  a  double  ring  of  black  and  rose, 
and  on  its  head  was  a  most  distinguished-looking, 
divided  crest,  tipped  with  rose  color  of  a  deeper 
shade.  It  was  loveliness  to  wonder  at.  I  cannot 
profess  that  I  was  awe-struck  (not  being  sure 
that  I  know  just  what  that  excellent  word  means), 
but  it  would  hardly  be  too  much  to  say  that "  as 
I  passed,  I  worshiped." 

The  Arizona  bird,  unhappily,  was  not  often 
seen  (the  Texas  bird  treated  me  better),  though 
when  I  did  come  upon  it,  it  was  generally  in  ac- 
cessible places  (in  wayside  hedgerows)  not  far 
from  houses.  It  would  be  impossible  to  see  either 
the  Texas  or  the  Arizona  bird  for  the  first  time 
without  comparing  it  with  the  cardinal,  the  two 
are  so  much  alike,  and  yet  so  different.  The 
cardinal  is  brighter,  but  for  beauty  give  me 
Pyrrhuloxia.  I  do  not  expect  the  sight  of  any 
other  bird  ever  to  fill  me  with  quite  so  rapturous 
a  delight  in  pure  color  as  that  first  unlooked-for 


276  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

Pyrrhuloxia  did  in  the  San  Antonio  chaparral. 
It  was  like  the  joy  that  comes  from  falling  sud- 
denly upon  a  stanza  of  magical  verse,  or  catch- 
ing from  some  unexpected  quarter  a  strain  of 
heavenly  music. 

If  Pyrocephalus  was  the  brightest  and  Pyrrhu- 
loxia the  most  beautiful  of  my  Arizona  birds, 
Phainopepla  must  be  called  the  most  elegant, 
the  most  supremely  graceful,  if  I  may  be  par- 
doned such  an  application  of  the  word,  the  most 
incomparably  genteel.  I  saw  it  first  at  Old  Camp 
Lowell,  before  mentioned,  near  the  Rillito,  at  the 
base  of  the  low  foothills  of  the  Santa  Catalina 
Mountains.  At  my  first  visit  to  the  camp,  which 
is  six  or  seven  miles  from  the  city  of  Tucson, 
straight  across  the  desert,  I  mistook  my  way  at 
the  last  and  approached  the  place  from  the  far- 
ther end  by  a  cross-cut  through  the  creosote 
bushes.  Just  as  I  reached  the  adobe  ruins,  all 
that  is  left  of  the  old  camp,  I  descried  a  black 
bird  balancing  itself  daintily  at  the  tip  of  a 
mesquite.  I  lifted  my  glass,  caught  sight  of 
the  bird's  crest,  and  knew  it  for  a  Phainopepla. 
How  good  it  is  to  find  something  you  have  greatly 
desired  and  little  expected  ! 

The  Phainopepla  (like  the  Pyrrhuloxia  it  has 
no  vernacular  appellation,  living  only  in  that 
sparsely  settled,  Spanish-speaking  corner  of  the 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  277 

world)  is  ranked  with  the  waxwings,  though  ex- 
cept for  its  crest  there  is  little  or  nothing  in  its 
outward  appearance  to  suggest  such  a  relation- 
ship; and  the  crest  itself  bears  but  a  moderate  re- 
semblance to  the  pointed  topknot  of  our  familiar 
cedar-bird.  What  I  call  the  Phainopepla's  ele- 
gance comes  partly  from  its  form,  which  is  the 
very  perfection  of  shapeliness,  having  in  the 
highest  degree  that  elusive  quality  which  in  semi- 
slang  phrase  is  designated  as  "  style ; "  partly 
from  its  motions,  all  prettily  conscious  and  in  a 
pleasing  sense  affected,  like  the  movements  of  a 
dancing-master  ;  and  partly  from  its  color,  which 
is  black  with  the  most  exquisite  bluish  sheen,  set 
off  in  the  finest  manner  by  broad  wing-patches 
of  white.  These  wing-patches  are  noticeable, 
furthermore,  for  being  divided  into  a  kind  of 
network  by  black  lines.  It  is  for  this  reason,  I 
suppose,  that  they  have  a  peculiar  gauzy  look  (I 
speak  of  their  appearance  while  in  action)  such 
as  I  have  never  seen  in  the  case  of  any  other  bird, 
and  which  often  made  me  think  of  the  ribbed, 
translucent  wings  of  certain  dragon  flies. 

Doubtless  this  peculiar  appearance  was  height- 
ened to  my  eyes,  because  of  the  mincing,  waver- 
ing, over-buoyant  method  of  flight  (the  wings 
being  carried  unusually  high)  to  which  I  have 
alluded,  and  which  always  .  suggested  to  me  the 


278  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

studied  movements  of  a  dance.  I  think  I  never 
saw  one  of  the  birds  so  far  forget  itself  as  to  take 
a  direct,  straightforward  course  from  one  point 
to  another.  No  matter  where  they  might  be 
going,  though  the  flight  were  only  a  matter  of  a 
hundred  yards,  they  progressed  always  in  pretty 
zigzags,  making  so  many  little,  unexpected,  in- 
decisive tacks  and  turns  by  the  way,  butterfly 
fashion,  that  you  began  to  wonder  where  they 
would  finally  come  to  rest. 

The  two  birds  first  seen  —  the  female  in  lovely 
gray  —  were  evidently  at  home  about  the  camp. 
The  berry-bearing  parasitic  plants  in  the  mes- 
quites  seemed  to  furnish  them  with  food,  and 
no  doubt  they  were  settled  there  for  the  season  ; 
and  at  least  two  more  were  wintering  out  among 
the  Chinese  kitchen  gardens,  not  far  away.  And 
some  weeks  afterward  I  came  upon  a  third  pair, 
also  in  a  mesquite  grove,  on  the  Santa  Cruz  side 
of  the  desert.  But  though  in  the  two  river  val- 
leys I  passed  a  good  many  hours  in  their  society, 
I  never  once  heard  them  sing,  nor,  so  far  as  I 
can  now  recall,  did  they  ever  utter  any  sound 
save  a  mellow  pip,  almost  exactly  like  a  certain 
call  of  the  robin  ;  so  like  it,  in  fact,  that  to  the 
very  last  I  never  heard  it  suddenly  given,  but 
my  first  thought  was  of  that  common  Eastern 
bird,  whose  voice  in  those  early  spring  days  it 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  279 

would  have  been  so  natural  and  so  pleasant  to 
Lear.  I  could  have  spared  a  dozen  or  two  of 
thrashers,  I  thought  (not  brown  thrashers),  for 
a  pair  of  robins  and  a  pair  of  bluebirds.  But 
southern  Arizona  is  a  kind  of  thrasher  paradise, 
while  robins  and  bluebirds  desire  a  better  coun- 
try, and  seemingly  know  where  to  find  it.1 

In  the  last  week  of  March,  however,  there 
took  place,  as  well  as  I  could  judge,  a  concerted 
movement  of  Phainopeplas  northward.  They 
showed  themselves  in  the  Santa  Cruz  Valley, 
here  and  there  a  pair,  until  they  became,  not 
abundant,  indeed,  but  a  counted-upon,  every-day 
sight.  Those  that  I  had  heretofore  seen,  it  ap- 
peared, were  only  a  few  winter  "  stay-overs."  Now 
the  season  had  opened ;  and  now  the  birds  be- 
gan singing.  For  curiosity's  sake  it  pleased  me 
to  hear  them,  but  the  brief  measure,  in  a  thin, 
squeaky  voice,  was  nothing  for  any  bird  to  be 
proud  of.  They  sing  best  to  the  eye.  "  Birds  of 
the  shining  robes,"  their  Greek  name  calls  them ; 
and  worthily  do  they  wear  it,  under  that  un- 
clouded Arizona  sun,  perching,  as  they  habitually 
do,  at  the  tip  of  some  tree  or  bush,  where  the 

1  It  should  be  said,  nevertheless,  that  straggling  flocks  of 
Western  bluebirds  —  lovely  creatures  —  were  met  with  on  the 
desert  on  rare  occasions,  and  once,  at  Old  Camp  Lowell,  three 
robins  —  Westerners,  no  doubt  —  passed  over  my  head,  flying 
toward  the  mountains,  in  which  they  are  said  to  winter. 


280  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

man  with  birds  in  his  eye  can  hardly  fail  to  sight 
them  and  name  them,  across  the  widest  barley 
field. 

One  of  the  birds  whose  acquaintance  I  chiefly 
wished  to  make  on  this  my  first  Western  jour- 
ney was  the  famous  canyon  wren,  —  famous  not 
for  its  beauty  (beauty  is  not  the  wren  family's 
mark),  but  for  its  voice.  Whether  my  wish 
would  be  gratified  was  of  course  a  question,  es- 
pecially as  my  very  modest  itinerary  included 
no  exploration  of  canyons  ;  but  I  was  not  with- 
out hope. 

I  had  been  in  Tucson  nearly  a  week,  when  one 
cool  morning  after  a  cold  night  (it  was  February 
7)  I  went  down  into  the  Santa  Cruz  Valley  and 
took  the  road  that  winds  —  where  there  is  barely 
room  for  it  —  between  the  base  of  Tucson 
Mountain  and  the  river.  Steep,  broken  cliffs, 
perhaps  a  hundred  feet  high,  were  on  my  right 
hand,  and  the  deep  bed  of  the  shallow  river  lay 
below  me  on  my  left.  Here  I  was  enjoying  the 
sun,  and  keeping  my  eyes  open,  when  a  set  of 
loud,  clear  bird  notes  in  a  descending  scale  fell 
upon  my  ears  from  overhead.  I  stopped,  pulled 
myself  together,  and  said,  "  A  canyon  wren."  I 
remembered  a  description  of  that  descending 
scale.  The  next  instant  a  small  hawk  took  wing 
from  the  spot  on  the  cliff  whence  the  notes  had 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  281 

seemed  to  fall.  My  mind  wavered,  but  only  for 
a  moment.  "  No,  no,"  I  said,  "  it  is  not  in  any 
hawk's  throat  to  produce  sounds  of  that  quality ;  " 
and  I  waited.  A  rock  wren  began  calling,  but 
rock  wrens  did  not  count  with  me  at  that  moment. 
Then,  in  a  very  different  voice,  a  wren,  presum- 
ably the  one  I  was  in  search  of,  began  fretting, 
unseen,  somewhere  above  my  head ;  and  then, 
silence.  I  waited  and  waited.  Finally  I  tried  an 
old  trick  —  I  started  on.  If  the  bird  was  watch- 
ing me,  as  likely  enough  he  was,  a  movement  to 
leave  his  neighborhood  would  perhaps  excite  him 
pleasurably.  And  so  it  did ;  or  so  it  seemed ;  for 
almost  at  once  the  song  was  given  out  and  re- 
peated :  a  hurried  introductory  phrase,  and  then 
the  fuller,  longer,  more  liquid  notes,  tripping  in 
procession  down  the  scale. 

The  singer  could  be  no  other  than  the  canyon 
wren ;  but  of  course  I  must  see  him.  At  last, 
my  patience  outwearing  his,  he  fell  to  scolding 
again,  and  glancing  up  in  the  direction  of  the 
sound,  I  saw  him  on  the  jutting  top  of  the  very 
highest  stone,  his  white  throat  and  breast  flash- 
ing in  the  sun,  and  the  dark,  rich  brown  of  his 
lower  parts  setting  the  whiteness  off  to  marvelous 
advantage.  There  he  stood,  calling  and  bobbing, 
calling  and  bobbing,  after  the  familiar  wren 
manner,  though  why  he  should  resent  an  inno- 


282  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

cent  man's  presence  so  far  below  was  more  than 
any  innocent  man  could  imagine. 

It  would  be  an  offense  against  the  truth  not 
to  confess  that  the  celebrated  song  fell  at  first  a 
little  short  of  my  expectations.  Perhaps  I  had 
heard  it  celebrated  somewhat  too  loudly  and  too 
often.  It  was  very  pleasing  ;  the  voice  beautifully 
clear  and  full,  and  the  cadence  of  the  sweetest ; 
it  had  the  grace  of  simplicity  ;  indeed,  there  was 
nothing  to  be  said  against  it,  except  that  I  had 
supposed  it  would  be  —  well,  I  hardly  know 
what,  but  somehow  wilder  and  more  telling. 

"Within  a  few  days  I  discovered  a  second  pair 
of  the  birds  not  far  away,  about  an  old,  long- 
disused  adobe  mill.  They  were  already  building 
a  nest  somewhere  inside,  entering  by  a  crack  over 
one  of  the  windows.  The  female  appeared  to  be 
doing  the  greater  part  of  the  work,  while  her 
mate  sat  upon  the  edge  of  the  flat  roof  and  sang 
for  her  encouragement,  or  railed  at  me  for  my 
too  assiduous  lounging  about  the  premises.  The 
more  I  listened  to  the  song,  the  better  I  enjoyed 
it ;  it  is  certainly  a  song  by  itself  ;  I  have  never 
heard  anything  with  which  to  compare  it ;  and  I 
was  especially  pleased  to  see  how  many  varia- 
tions the  performer  was  able  to  introduce  into 
his  music,  and  yet  leave  it  always  the  same. 

The  first  pair,  on  the  precipitous  face  of  the 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  283 

mountain,  had  chosen  the  more  romantic  site,  and 
I  often  stopped  to  admire  their  address  in  climb- 
ing about  over  the  almost  perpendicular  surface 
of  the  rock  ;  now  disappearing  for  a  few  seconds, 
now  popping  into  sight  again  a  little  further  on  ; 
finding  a  foothold  everywhere,  no  matter  how 
smooth  and  steep  the  rock  might  look. 

The  canyon  wren  is  a  darling  bird  and  a  mu- 
sical genius;  and  now  that  I  have  ceased  to 
measure  his  song  by  my  extravagant  expectations 
concerning  it,  I  do  not  wish  it  in  any  wise  altered. 
His  natural  home  is  by  the  side  of  falling  water 
(I  have  heard  him  since,  where  I  should  have 
heard  him  first,  in  a  canyon),  and  his  notes  fall 
with  it.  I  seem  to  hear  them  dropping  one  by 
one,  every  note  by  itself,  as  I  write  about  them. 
If  they  are  not  of  a  kind  to  be  ecstatic  over  at  a 
first  hearing  (a  little  too  simple  for  that),  they 
are  all  the  surer  of  a  long  welcome.  Indeed,  I 
am  half  ashamed  to  have  so  much  as  referred  to 
my  own  early  lack  of  appreciation  of  their  excel- 
lence. Perhaps  this  was  one  of  the  times  when 
the  truth  should  not  have  been  spoken. 

My  mention  just  now  of  the  wren's  cleverness 
in  traveling  over  the  steep  side  of  Tucson  Moun- 
tain called  to  mind  a  similar  performance  on  the 
part  of  a  very  different  bird  —  a  road-runner  — 
in  the  same  place  ;  and  though  it  was  not  in  my 


284  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

plan  to  name  that  bird  in  this  paper,  I  cannot 
deny  myself  the  digression. 

I  had  taken  a  friend,  newly  inoculated  with 
ornithological  fever,  down  to  this  mountain-side 
road  to  show  him  a  black-chinned  humming- 
bird. We  had  seen  it,  to  his  amazement,  on  the 
very  mesquite  where  I  had  told  him  it  would 
be  ("  Well !  "  he  said,  —  and  a  most  eloquent 
"well"  it  was, — when  I  pointed  the  bird  out, 
scarcely  more  than  a  speck,  as  we  came  in  sight 
of  the  bush),  and  were  driving  further,  when  I 
laid  my  hand  on  the  reins  and  bade  him  look  up. 
There,  halfway  up  the  precipitous,  broken  cliff, 
was  the  big,  mottled,  long-tailed  bird,  looking 
strangely  out  of  place  to  both  of  us,  who  had 
never  seen  him  before  except  in  the  lowlands, 
running  along  the  road,  or  dodging  among  clumps 
of  bushes.  Then  of  a  sudden,  he  began  climbing, 
and  almost  in  no  time  was  on  the  very  topmost 
stone,  at  the  base  of  a  stunted  palo-verde.  There 
he  fell  to  cooing  (like  a  dove,  I  said,  forgetting 
at  the  moment  that  the  road-runner  is  a  kind  of 
cuckoo),  and  by  the  time  he  had  repeated  the 
phrase  three  or  four  times  we  remarked  that 
before  doing  so  he  invariably  lowered  his  head. 
We  sat  and  watched  and  listened  ("  There!  "  one 
or  the  other  would  say,  as  the  head  was  ducked) 
for  I  know  not  how  many  minutes,  commenting 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  285 

upon  the  droll  appearance  of  the  bird,  perched 
thus  above  the  world,  and  cooing  in  this  (for 
him)  ridiculous,  lovelorn,  gesticulatory  manner. 

Then,  as  we  drove  on,  I  recalled  the  strangely 
rapid  and  effortless  gait  with  which  he  had  gone 
up  the  mountain.  "  He  did  n't  use  his  wings,  did 
he  ?  "  I  asked  ;  and  my  companion  thought  not. 
I  was  reminded  of  a  bird  of  the  same  land  that 
I  had  seen  a  few  days  before  cross  a  deep  gully 
perhaps  twenty  feet  in  width.  "  He  seemed  to 
slide  across,"  said  the  man  who  was  with  me. 
That  was  exactly  the  word.  He  did  not  lift  a 
wing,  to  the  best  of  our  noticing,  nor  rise  so  much 
as  an  inch  into  the  air,  but  as  it  were  stepped 
from  one  bank  to  the  other.  So  this  second  bird 
went  up  the  mountain-side  almost  without  our 
seeing  how  he  did  it.  A  few  steps,  and  he  was 
there,  as  by  the  exercise  of  some  special  gift  of 
specific  levity.  He  did  not  fly ;  and  yet  it  might 
have  "  seemed  he  flew,  the  way  so  easy  was." 
Take  him  how  you  will,  the  road-runner's  looks 
do  not  belie  him :  he  is  an  odd  one ;  and  never 
odder,  I  should  guess,  than  when  he  stands  upon 
a  mountain-top  and  with  lowered  head  pours  out 
his  amorous  soul  in  coos  as  gentle  as  a  sucking 
dove's.  I  count  myself  happy  to  have  witnessed 
the  moving  spectacle. 

I  am  running  into  superlatives,  but  no  matter. 


286  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

The  feeling  against  their  use  is  largely  prejudice. 
Let  me  suit  myself  with  one  or  two  more,  there- 
fore, and  say  that  the  rarest  and  most  exciting 
bird  seen  by  me  in  Arizona  was  a  painted  red- 
start, Setophaga  picta.  It  was  at  the  base  of 
Tucson  Mountain,  close  by  the  canyon  wrens'  old 
mill.  The  vermilion  flycatcher,  rare  as  I  con- 
sidered it  at  first,  became  after  a  while  almost 
excessively  common.  I  believe  it  is  no  exagger- 
ation to  say  that  forty  or  fifty  pairs  must  have 
been  living  in  and  about  Tucson  before  the  first 
of  April.  Unless  you  were  out  upon  the  desert, 
you  could  hardly  turn  round  without  seeing  or 
hearing  them.  But  there  was  no  danger  of  the 
painted  redstart's  cheapening  itself  after  this 
fashion.  I  saw  it  twice,  for  perhaps  ten  minutes 
in  all,  and  as  long  as  I  live  I  shall  be  thankful 
for  the  sight. 

I  was  playing  the  spy  upon  a  pair  of  what  I 
took  to  be  Arkansas  goldfinches,  and  the  ques- 
tion being  a  nice  one,  had  got  over  a  wire  fence 
to  have  the  sun  at  my  back.  There  I  had  barely 
focused  my  eight-power  glass  upon  a  leafless  wil- 
low beside  an  irrigation  ditch,  when  all  at  once 
there  moved  into  its  field  such  a  piece  of  absolute 
gorgeousness  as  I  have  no  hope  of  making  my 
reader  see  by  means  of  any  description :  a  small 
bird  in  three  colors,  —  deep,  velvety  black,  the 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  287 

snowiest  white,  and  the  most  brilliant  red.  Its 
glory  lay  in  the  depth  and  purity  of  the  three 
colors  ;  its  singularity  lay  in  a  point  not  men- 
tioned in  book  descriptions,  being  inconspicuous, 
I  suppose,  in  cabinet  specimens :  a  line  (almost 
literally  a  line)  of  white  below  the  eye.  From  its 
position  and  its  extreme  tenuity  I  took  it  for  the 
lower  eyelid,  but  as  to  that  I  cannot  speak  with 
positiveness.  It  would  hardly  have  showed,  even 
in  life,  I  dare  say,  but  for  its  intensely  black  sur- 
roundings. As  it  was,  it  fairly  stared  at  me.  I 
cannot  affirm  that  it  added  to  the  bird's  beauty. 
Apart  from  it  the  colors  were  all  what  I  may  call 
solid,  —  laid  on  in  broad  masses,  that  is  :  a  red 
belly,  a  long  white  band  (not  a  bar)  on  each 
wing,  some  white  tail  feathers,  white  lower  tail 
coverts,  and  everything  else  black.  It  does  not 
sound  like  anything  so  very  extraordinary,  I  con- 
fess. But  the  reader  should  have  seen  it.  Unless 
he  is  a  very  dry  stick  indeed,  he  would  have  let 
off  an  exclamation  or  two,  I  can  warrant.  There 
are  cases  in  which  the  whole  is  a  good  deal  more 
than  the  sum  of  all  its  parts. 

The  bird  was  on  one  of  the  larger  branches, 
over  which  it  moved  in  something  of  the  black- 
and-white  creeper's  manner,  turning  its  head  to 
one  side  and  the  other  alternately  as  it  progressed. 
Then  it  sat  still  a  long  time  (a  long  time  for  a 


288  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

warbler),  so  near  me  that  the  glass  brought  it  al- 
most into  my  hand,  while  I  devoured  its  beauty  ; 
and  then,  of  a  sudden,  it  took  flight  into  the 
dense,  leafy  top  of  a  tall  cottonwood,  and  I  saw 
it  no  more.  No  more  for  that  time,  that  is  to  say. 
In  my  mind,  indeed,  I  bade  it  good-by  forever. 
It  was  not  to  be  thought  of  that  such  a  bit  of 
splendor  (I  had  read  of  it  as  a  mountain  bird) 
should  happen  in  my  way  more  than  once.  But 
eight  days  afterward  (March  28),  in  nearly  the 
same  place,  it  appeared  again,  straight  over  my 
head ;  and  I  was  almost  as  much  astonished  as 
before.  It  was  exploring  the  bare  branches  of  a 
row  of  roadside  ash  trees,  and  I  followed  it,  or 
rather  preceded  it,  backing  away  as  it  flitted  from 
one  tree  to  the  next,  keeping  the  sun  behind  me. 
It  carried  itself  now  much  like  the  common  red- 
start ;  a  little  more  inclined  to  moments  of  inac- 
tivity, perhaps,  but  at  short  intervals  darting  into 
the  air  after  a  passing  insect  with  all  conceivable 
quickness. 

And  such  colors !  Such  an  unspeakable  red, 
so  intense  a  black,  and  so  pure  a  white  !  If  I  said 
that  the  vermilion  flycatcher  was  the  brightest 
bird  I  saw  in  Arizona,  I  was  like  the  Hebrew 
psalmist.  I  said  it  in  my  haste. 

This  time  the  redstart  was  in  a  singing  mood. 
On  the  previous  occasion  it  had  kept  silence,  and 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  289 

I  had  thought  I  was  glad  to  have  it  so,  feeling 
that  no  voice  could  be  good  enough  to  go  with 
such  feathers.  In  its  way  the  feeling  was  justi- 
fied ;  but,  after  all,  it  would  have  been  too  bad 
to  miss  the  song.  Curiosity  has  its  claims,  no  less 
than  sentiment.  And  happily  the  song  proved  to 
be  a  very  pretty  one ;  similar  to  that  of  the 
Eastern  bird,  to  be  sure,  but  less  hurried  (so  it 
seemed  to  me),  less  over-emphatic,  and  in  a  voice 
less  sharp  and  thin  ;  a  very  pretty  song  (for  a 
warbler),  though,  as  is  true  of  the  Phainopepla 
and  most  other  brilliantly  handsome  birds  (and 
all  good  children),  the  redstart's  proper  appeal  is 
to  the  eye.  So  far  as  human  appreciation  is  con- 
cerned, it  need  make  no  other. 

I  have  heard  a  canyon  wren  in  a  canyon,  I 
said.  It  was  a  glorious  day  in  a  glorious  place, 
—  Sabino  Canyon,  it  is  called,  in  the  Santa 
Catalina  Mountains.  And  it  was  there,  where 
the  ground  was  all  a  flower  garden,  and  the  dash- 
ing brook  a  doubly  delightful  sight  and  sound 
after  so  much  wandering  over  the  desert  and  so 
many  crossings  of  dry,  sandy  river-beds,  —  it  was 
there,  amid  a  cluster  of  leafy  oaks  (strange  oak 
leaves  they  were)  and  leafless  hackberry  trees, 
that  I  saw  my  first  and  only  solitaire,  —  Mya- 
destes  townsendii.  I  have  praised  other  birds  for 
their  brightness  and  song  ;  this  one  I  must  praise 


290  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

for  a  certain  nameless  dignity  and,  as  the  present- 
day  word  is,  distinction.  He  did  not  deign  to 
break  silence,  or  to  notice  in  any  manner,  unless 
it  were  by  an  added  touch  of  patrician  reserve, 
the  presence  of  three  human  intruders.  I  stared 
at  him,  —  exercising  a  cat's  privilege,  —  for  all 
his  hauteur,  admiring  his  gray  colors,  his  con- 
spicuous white  eye-ring,  and  his  manner.  I  say 
"  manner,"  not  "  manners."  You  would  never 
liken  Mm  to  a  dancing-master. 

He  was  the  solitaire,  I  somehow  felt  certain 
(certain  with  a  lingering  of  uncertainty),  though 
I  had  forgotten  all  description  of  that  bird's  ap- 
pearance. It  was  the  place  for  him,  and  his  looks 
went  with  the  name.  Moreover,  to  confess  a  more 
prosaic  consideration,  there  was  nothing  else  he 
could  be. 

"  Myadestes,"  I  said  to  my  two  companions, 
both  unacquainted  with  such  matters ;  "  I  think 
it  is  Myadestes,  though  I  can't  exactly  tell  why  I 
think  so." 

We  must  go  into  the  canyon  a  little  way,  gaz- 
ing up  at  the  walls,  picking  a  few  of  the  more 
beautiful  flowers,  feeling  the  place  itself  (the  best 
thing  one  can  do,  whether  in  a  canyon  or  on  a 
mountain-top)  ;  then  we  came  back  to  the  hack- 
berry  trees,  but  the  solitaire  was  no  longer  in 
them.  I  had  had  my  opportunity,  and  perhaps 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS  291 

had  made  too  little  of  it.  It  is  altogether  likely 
that  I  shall  never  see  another  bird  of  his  kind. 
For  now  those  cloudless  Arizona  days,  the 
creosote-covered  desert,  and  the  mountain  ranges 
standing  round  about  it,  are  all  for  me  as  things 
past  and  done  ;  a  bright  memory,  and  no  more. 
One  event  conspired  with  another  to  put  a  sudden 
end  to  my  visit  (which  was  already  longer  than 
I  had  planned),  and  on  the  last  day  of  March  I 
walked  for  the  last  time  under  that  row  of  "  leaf- 
less ash  trees,"  —  no  longer  quite  leafless,  and  no 
longer  with  a  painted  redstart  in  them,  —  and 
over  that  piece  of  winding  road  between  the 
craggy  hill  and  the  river.  Now  I  courted  not  the 
sun,  but  the  shade ;  it  was  the  sun,  more  than 
anything  else,  that  was  hurrying  me  away,  when 
I  would  gladly  have  stayed  longer ;  but  sunny 
or  shady,  I  stopped  a  bit  in  each  of  the  more 
familiar  places.  Nobody  knew  or  cared  that  I 
was  taking  leave.  All  things  remained  as  they 
had  been.  The  same  rock  wrens  were  practicing 
endless  vocal  variations  here  and  there  upon 
the  stony  hillside ;  the  same  fretful  verdin  was 
talking  about  something,  it  was  beyond  me  to 
tell  what,  with  the  old  emphatic  monotony ;  the 
hummingbird  stood  on  the  tip  of  his  mesquite 
bush,  still  turning  his  head  eagerly  from  side  to 
side,  as  if  he  expected  her,  and  wondered  why  on 


292  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

earth  she  was  so  long  in  coming;  the  mocker 
across  the  field  (one  of  no  more  than  half  a  dozen 
that  I  saw  about  Tucson  !  )  was  bringing  out  of 
his  treasury  things  new  and  old  (a  great  bird 
that,  always  with  another  shot  in  his  locker)  ; 
the  Lucy  warbler,  daintiest  of  the  dainty,  sang 
softly  amid  the  willow  catkins,  a  chorus  of  bees 
accompanying ;  the  black  cap  of  the  pileolated 
warbler  was  not  in  the  blossoming  quince-bush 
hedge  (that  was  a  pity)  ;  the  desert-loving  spar- 
row hawk  sat  at  the  top  of  a  giant  cactus,  as  if 
its  thorns  were  nothing  but  a  cushion ;  the  happy 
little  Mexican  boy,  who  lived  in  one  corner  of  the 
old  mill,  came  down  the  road  with  his  usual  smile 
of  welcome  (we  were  almost  old  friends  by  this 
time)  and  a  glance  into  the  trees,  meaning  to 
say,  what  he  could  not  express  in  English,  nor  I 
understand  in  Spanish,  "  I  know  what  you  are 
doing ;  "  and  then,  as  I  rounded  the  bend,  under 
the  beetling  crags,  the  same  canyon  wren,  my  first 
one,  not  dreaming  what  a  favor  he  was  confer- 
ring upon  the  man  he  had  so  often  chided  as  a  tres- 
passer, let  fall  a  few  measures  of  his  lovely  song. 
How  sweet  and  cool  the  notes  were !  Unless  it 
was  the  sound  of  the  brook  in  the  Sabino  Canyon, 
I  believe  I  heard  nothing  else  so  good  in  Arizona. 
But  at  San  Antonio,  on  my  way  homeward,  I 
heard  notes  not  to  be  called  musical,  in  the 


A  BUNCH  OF  BRIGHT  BIRDS          293 

smaller  and  more  ordinary  sense  of  the  word ;  as 
unlike  as  possible,  certainly,  to  the  classic  sweet- 
ness of  the  canyon  wren's  tune ;  but  to  me  even 
more  exciting  and  memorable.  On  a  sultry,  in- 
dolent afternoon  (April  9)  I  had  betaken  myself 
to  Cemetery  Hill  for  a  lazy  stroll,  and  had  barely 
alighted  from  the  electric  car,  when  I  heard 
strange  noises  somewhere  near  at  hand.  In  my 
confusion  I  thought  for  an  instant  of  the  scissor- 
tailed  flycatchers,  with  whose  various  outlandish 
outcries  and  antics  I  had  been  for  several  days 
amusing  myself.  Then  I  discovered  that  the 
sound  came  from  above,  and  looking  up,  saw 
straight  over  my  head,  between  the  hilltop  and 
the  clouds,  a  wedge-shaped  flock  of  large  birds. 
Long  slender  necks  and  bills,  feet  drawn  up  and 
projecting  out  behind  the  tails,  wing-action  mod- 
erate (after  the  manner  of  geese  rather  than 
ducks),  color  dark,  —  so  much,  and  no  more,  the 
glass  showed  me,  while  the  birds,  sixty  or  more 
in  number,  as  I  guessed,  were  fast  receding  north- 
ward. They  should  be  cranes,  I  said  to  myself, 
since  they  were  surely  not  herons,  and  then,  like 
a  flash,  it  came  over  me  that  I  knew  the  voice. 
By  good  luck  I  had  lived  the  winter  before  where 
I  heard  continually  the  lusty  shouts  of  a  captive 
sandhill  crane  ;  and  it  was  to  a  chorus  of  sand- 
hill cranes  that  I  was  now  listening. 


294  TEXAS  AND  ARIZONA 

The  flock  disappeared,  the  tumult  lessened  and 
ceased,  and  I  passed  on.  But  fifteen  minutes 
afterward,  as  I  was  retracing  my  steps  over  the 
hill,  suddenly  I  heard  the  same  resounding  chorus 
again.  A  second  flock  of  cranes  was  passing. 
This,  too,  was  in  a  V-shaped  line,  though  for 
some  reason  it  fell  into  disorder  almost  immedi- 
ately. Now  I  essayed  a  count,  and  had  just  con- 
cluded that  there  were  some  eighty  of  the  birds, 
when  a  commotion  behind  me  caused  me  to  turn 
my  head.  To  my  amazement,  a  third  and  much 
larger  flock  was  following  close  behind  the 
second.  There  was  no  numbering  it  with  exact- 
ness, but  I  ran  my  glass  down  the  long,  wavering 
line,  as  best  I  could,  and  counted  one  hundred 
and  fifteen. 

An  hour  before  I  had  never  seen  a  sandhill 
crane  in  its  native  wildness  (a  creature  nearly 
or  quite  as  tall  as  myself),  and  behold,  here  was 
the  sky  full  of  them.  And  what  a  judgment-day 
trumpeting  they  made  !  Angels  and  archangels, 
cherubim  and  seraphim  !  Perhaps  I  did  not  enjoy 
it,  —  there,  with  the  white  gravestones  standing 
all  about  me.  After  all,  there  is  something  in 
mere  volume  of  sound.  If  it  does  not  feed  the 
soul,  at  least  it  stirs  the  blood.  And  that  is  a 
good  thing,  also.  I  wonder  if  Michelangelo  did 
not  at  some  time  or  other  see  and  hear  the  like. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ADDER'S-TONGUE,  19,  29. 
Anemone,  6. 
Azalea,  Lapland,  36. 

Bayberry,  101. 
Bellwort,  6. 
Birch,  yellow,  15,  72. 
Bittern,  least,  126. 
Blackbird,  Brewer's,  202. 

crow,  129. 

red-winged,  86,  124, 139. 

rusty,  66. 

Bluebird,  8,  54,  65,76,86, 132, 
150,  156. 

chestnut-backed,  181, 186. 

Western,  279. 
Butterfly,  clouded-sulphur,  61. 

red  admiral,  28. 
Buzzard,  turkey,  86, 95, 124. 

Cactus,  giant,  199. 
Callicarpa,  99. 

Catbird,  86,100,  107,  129, 130. 
Chewink,  Arctic,  178. 

red-eyed,  108,  140. 

white-eyed,  140,  146. 
Chickadee,  black-capped,  21, 
64,  66,  79,  86, 139. 

Hudsonian,  37. 
Chuck-wilTs-widow,  154. 
Clintonia,  4. 
Coccoloba,  118. 
Cocoa  plum,  115,  122. 
Cormorant,  Florida,  84,  124. 
Coyote,  224. 
Cranberry,  mountain,  23. 


Crane,  sandhill,  293. 
Creosote  bush,  200,  206. 
Crescentia,  112. 
Crinum,  126. 
Crossbill,  red,  63,  78. 
Crow,  American,  79,  157. 

carrion,  86,  124. 

fish,  85,  97, 129. 
Cypress,  122. 

Diapensia,  35. 

Dove,  ground,  86, 130. 

Dutchman' s-breechei,  19,  29. 

Eagle,  bald,  141. 
golden,  220. 

Evening  primrose,  200,  247. 
Eyebright,  35. 

Ficus  aurea,  99. 
Finch,  Lincoln,  74,  192. 

purple,  8,  66,  78.     . 
Flicker,  85,  86, 129. 

red-shafted,  178. 
Flycatcher,  Arizona    crested, 
271. 

crested,  108,  130. 

olive-sided,  63. 

scissor-tailed,  259. 

vermilion,  266,  286. 

Gallinule,  Florida,  149. 
Gnatcatcher,  blue-gray,  85, 86, 

108. 

plumbeous,  219. 
Goldfinch,  American,  41, 61,78. 


INDEX 


Goldfinch  Mexican,  178. 
Grackle,  boat-tailed,  85,  129, 

130. 
Grosbeak,  cardinal,    87,  104, 

107, 108,  129, 130,  134, 

139, 149, 156. 
rose-breasted,  5,  10,  21. 
Grouse,  11,  21,  70,  78. 
Gumbo-limbo,  100. 

Hawk,  desert    sparrow,    184, 
292. 

sharp-shinned,  38,  41,  69. 

sparrow,  41,  94. 

Western  red-tailed,  219. 
Heron,  great  blue,  141. 

Louisiana,  124. 
Hickory,  148. 
Hornbeam,  145. 
House  finch,  180, 188, 199. 
Huisache,  162. 

Hummingbird,  black-chinned. 
284,  291. 

Costa,  234. 

ruby-throated,  86, 130. 

Jay,  blue,  67,  79,  86, 108,  130. 

Florida,  93,  140. 
Jessamine,  yellow,  137,  149. 
Junco,  intermediate,  185. 

Kingfisher,  124. 

Kinglet,  golden-crowned,   64, 

71. 
ruby-crowned,  65,  66,  78, 

107, 130,  238. 

Lark  bunting,  191, 194. 
Lupine,  200,  247. 

Mangrove,  98,  121. 
Martin,  purple,  124. 
Meadow  lark,  156,  183. 
Mockingbird,  85,  86,  87,  95, 


100,  104, 107,  109, 129, 

130,  139, 156. 
Western,  254,  292. 
Moon-flower,  88. 
Morning-glory,  88,  97. 

Nonpareil,  105,  108,  129,  130, 

131,134. 
Nuthatch,  brown-headed,  150, 

156. 

Canadian  (red-breasted), 
7,  41,  60,  62,  64,  66,  71, 
79. 

Carolina  (white-breasted), 
123. 

Ocotillo,  199. 
Orchids,  98. 
Oriole,  Baltimore,  130. 
Osprey,  124,  141. 
Oven-bird,  21, 107. 

Pavonia,  111. 
Pelican,  brown,  140. 
Phainopepla,  276,  289. 
Phlox,  Drummond,  137,  153. 
Phoebe,  86,  87,  104,  108,  130, 
131. 

black,  196,  240. 

Say's,  181,  255. 
Pithecolobium,  98. 
Plover,  killdeer,  124. 
Poppy,  California,  247,  249. 
Porcupine,  27. 
Pyrrhuloxia,  Arizona,  185,  274. 

Texas,  274. 

Rabbits,  227. 
Rail,  Carolina,  149. 
Raven,  212. 

white-necked,    182,    191, 

211,  219,  221. 
Redstart,  64. 

painted,  286. 


INDEX 


299 


Road-runner,  163,  259,  284. 
Robin,  8,  54,  66,  78,  86. 

Western,  279. 
Rose,  Cherokee,  136,  154. 

Sandwort,  Greenland,  23. 
Sapsucker,  yellow-bellied,  59, 

110. 

Seven-year  apple,  116. 
Shrike,  loggerhead,  95,  109. 
Siskin,  21,  63,  78. 
Snowbird,  21,  41,  62,  65,  66, 

69,  78. 

Solitaire,  289. 
Sparrow,  Cassin,  263. 
chipping,  66. 
desert,  210. 
pine-wood,  156. 
sage,  211. 
savanna,  9. 
song,  54,  65,  66,  75,  78, 

138. 

vesper,  75,  78. 
white-crowned,  14,  74,  78, 

192. 

white-throated,  5,  8,  11, 
22,  26,  58,  62,  64,  65, 
66,  139. 
Swallow,  barn,  8. 

tree,  86,  95,  124. 
Sweet-bay,  146. 
Sweet-gum,  136,  145. 
Swift,  white-throated,  273. 

Tanager,  summer,  155. 
Thrasher,  Bendire,  252,  255. 

brown,  138,  156. 

crissal,  254. 

Palmer,  209,251,255. 

sage,  207,  255. 
Thrush,  Bicknell's,  21,  37. 

hermit,  8,  66,  78,  130. 

Swainson's,  21, 27. 
Titmouse,  tufted,  139. 


Trema,  100. 

Trillium,  painted,  6,  19. 
purple,  29. 

Vaccinium  caespitosum,  49. 
Verdin,  172,  239,  257,  291. 
Violet,  round-leaved,  4,  11, 

19,  29. 

Selkirk's,  30. 
Vireo,  blue-headed  (solitary), 

21,  86,  108,  129. 
red-eyed,  147,  155. 
yellow-throated,  129,  130. 
white-eyed,  86,  104,  108, 
130,  140, 147. 

Warbler,  Bachman's,  134. 
bay-breasted,  21. 
black-and-white,  107, 129, 

156. 

Blackburnian,  21. 
black-throated  blue,  21. 
black-throated  green,  21. 
Lucy,  292. 
myrtle,  21,  26,  41,  65,  66, 

76,  86,  101,  107,  129, 

130,  156. 

palm,  86,  107,  129,  130. 
parula,  21,  107,  129,  133, 

134,  140,  155. 
pileolated,  292. 
pine,  86,  156. 
prairie,  107,  129,  133, 156. 
yellow  palm,  78. 
yellow-throated,  129,  130, 

133,  134, 156. 

Woodpecker,  downy,  110,  129. 
hairy,  18,  59,  63,  110. 
ivory-billed,  110. 
pileated,  79,  109,  150. 
red-bellied,  86,  110,  129, 

131,  149. 

red-cockaded,  110. 
red-headed,  110,  129. 


300 


INDEX 


Wood  pewee,  63. 
Wren,  Baird,  255. 
cactus,  207,  251,  255. 
canyon,  255,  280,  289,  292. 
Carolina,    107,   139,  147, 
156. 
house,  105,  107,  129. 

interior  tule,  255. 
rock,  198,  255,  291. 
winter,  21,  59,  62,  64,  66. 

Yellow-throat,  Florida,  86,  105, 
107. 
Maryland,  57. 

(Stfce 

Elf  ctrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


AN 


APR  1  6  1356 

-H*** 


«1 


397845-   ' 


OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


